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LIFE AND SERVICE SERIES 


STUDIES IN THE PARABLES OF JESUS 
HALFORD E, LUCCOCK — 


HEART MESSAGES FROM THE PSALMS 
RALPH WELLES KEELER 


AMOS, PROPHET OF A NEW ORDER 
LINDSAY B. LONGACRE 


ELEMENTS OF PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY 
WILLIAM S. MITCHELL 


THE CHRISTIAN IN SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS 
DORR FRANK DIEFENDORF 


DEUTERONOMY, A PROPHETIC LAWBOOK 
LINDSAY B. LONGACRE 


CHRISTIAN IDEALS IN INDUSTRY 
F. ERNEST JOHNSON and ARTHUR E. HOLT 


STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 
LUTHER E. LOVEJOY 





vf f 


LIFE AND SERVICE SERIES | esas 


HENRY H. MEYER, Editor 
WADE CRAWFORD BARCLAY, Associate Editor. 


STEWARDSHIP 
FOR ALL OF LIFE 


By /, 
LUTHER E. ‘LOVEJOY 
Approved by the Committee on Curriculum 


of the Board of Sunday Schools of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church 





THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


——— 


cyt 


Copyright, 1924, by 
LUTHER E. LOVEJOY 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign 
languages, including the Scandinavian 


Printed in the United States of America 


First Edition Printed September, 1924 
Reprinted December, 1924 


The Bible text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and is 
used by permission. 


To My Broruer 
OWEN R. LOVEJOY, 


WHO, IN A PROVIDENTIAL MOMENT, FANNED 
THE SPARK OF MY STEWARDSHIP CONVICTION 
TO A FLAME OF ENTHUSIASM, THUS MAKING 
INEVITABLE A LIFELONG DEVOTION TO THIS 
CARDINAL PRINCIPLE OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE 


Avie ie 
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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
POREWORD Ghee cil sheer weeny Aly 9 
CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP PRINCIPLES....... 13 
SIBEAGGRAPHY airs on iiah Onn ene WAN 15 

I. Tas DIMENSIONS OF STEWARDSHIP......... 17 

II. Toe Sprines OF STEWARDSHIP............. 27 
Pe PAB PHYAICAL, Dim occ il es 37 
EV. PRR SIMENTAL DIFES. tid Oi a iteniaes s Dates 47 
We OCIAL LUBLATIONS ory ciel ie eA): arc net 57 
RIS EVOTION uc tiien. 02's 4uluiv rele allay Pele alten ert 69 
Ria SOROS ERNIONG (chs ceteris /sh aieue al dian) Siokay Laren 79 
Vee mIeroniCAlL SOURCES... 2) 'hs noes, Wek 87 
IX: THe Master anp Monnmy.....2...0..0000.1 95 
Ew MY: CRN TURING. 0 isles’ de aiuiilein ae 105 
PU PECOMOMIC: ASPHOTBoi3 (cosas kd «aps wale of4 t inse 115 
Ao ertoCAL AND SPIRITUAL. 015 ioc iy ee cise 125 
PON OUVY OREN CPE VICENS ateie fc 5 Sata via itiele Gi cre ayn or oe 135 


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FOREWORD 


To set forth the general features of Christian steward- 
ship in such a way as to make it more easily understood 
and more widely accepted as a foundation principle of 
Christian living and service is the purpose of this little 
volume. 

The author’s endeavor has been to provide such a state- 
ment of stewardship principles as would prove a@ trust- 
worthy guide for mature disciples, yet to present the 
subject in such simple language as to be easily compre- 
hensible to the young and immature. The treatment is 
therefore not intended to be exhaustive nor in any way 
controversial. No scriptural proof texts are cited, as none 
have been discovered. The more strictly doctrinal and 
philosophical consideration of the subject has been amply 
provided for by other writers. What seems particularly 
needful at the present hour is a plain, common-sense 
view of stewardship, which shall commend it to sober- 
minded Christians as the ideal, yet normal and whole- 
some way of life. Christian stewardship, as here con- 

ceived of, is in no sense an obscure, complicated, mysteri- 
ous, or baffling doctrine, but one so simple, rational, 
straightforward, and inviting that the wayfaring man, 
whatever his intellectual limitations, need not err therein. 

It may seem that a slightly disproportionate amount of 
space has been given to the stewardship of material pos- 
sessions. This is deliberate. Other phases of stewardship 
are so constantly the subject matter of ordinary religious 
discussion that less attention to them is needed here, while 
the stewardship of money has too often been ignored or 
neglected. Meanwhile, there is pressing need in the church 
that a keener sense of this stewardship should prevail 
and should result in more ample resources for Kingdom 
service; at the same time the most obvious and reliable 
test of the average Christian’s devotion is made, and the 

9 


10 FOREWORD 


claims of God upon his affection and life are most readily 
and practically acknowledged by the spirit and the measure 
of his consecration of material accumulations. In the dis- 
cussion of systematic and proportionate beneficence the 
contribution of the tithe of income is recommended as a 
uniform standard for Christians, not on the basis of any 
legal enactment, past or present, and not with the 
promise of any material reward, but as agreeable to the 
nobler impulses of religious men in all ages, as apparently 
acceptable to the Owner and Giver of all, as highly satis- 
factory in the experience of a growing multitude of mod- 
ern disciples, and as approved to the practical common 
sense of the Christian business world to-day. 

The hope is cherished that this brief treatise may find a 
welcome in thousands of Christian homes as a helpful 
counselor in temporal and spiritual duties and for gen- 
eral religious reading. It has also been adapted, by care- 
fully prepared lists of suggestions and questions, for use 
as a textbook in special stewardship study classes, in study 
on church training night, and for use in Sunday-school 
classes, young people’s groups, women’s missionary organ- 
izations, and summer institutes and assemblies. 

The contents of the volume have been arranged in thir- 
teen chapters to facilitate use of the text in young people’s 
and.adult classes in church schools, the study thus coy- 
ering a quarter of thirteen weeks. Where a briefer course 
of study, to be completed in six to eight weeks, is desired 
by young people’s societies or other study classes, or by 
groups meeting on six to eight consecutive evenings, cer- 
tain chapters may be designated by’ the teacher to be 
omitted. Groups meeting for a full hour or longer may 
perhaps be able to cover two chapters at each session. — 

Grateful acknowledgment is due and gladly offered to 
my predecessors in office—Drs. Harvey Reeves Calkins and 
Ralph 8S. Cushman—for stimulating ideals and helpful 
material; to Bishop William F. Oldham, Dr. John C. 
Floyd, and John W. Fisher, who inspired and assisted 
my first adventure in stewardship work; to various au- 
thors whose writings I have read or from whom I have 
quoted in the preparation of this volume; to Dr. Ralph 


FOREWORD 11 


K. Diffendorfer ; and to my faithful secretary, Miss Evelyn 
Ralston, for ungrudging labor in the preparation of ma- 
terials and manuscripts. Full ultimate responsibility for 
all defects is, however, to be charged to the limitations and 
stubborn will of the writer. ait 


Chicago, June, 1924. 





CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP PRINCIPLES 
APPROVED BY THE 
UNITED STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL OF THE 
CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA, 
MAY 10, 1924 


1. Stewardship Fundamental 


THE recognition of our responsibility to God as stew- 
ards of everything we are and haye—life, time, talents, 
possessions, and spiritual resources—is fundamental to a 
wholesome Christian faith and experience. 

Stewardship is primarily spiritual. Its great objective 
is character. It is the principle on which daily life must 
be organized in order to be fully Christian. 


2. Not Optional 


Stewardship grows out of our obligation to God as 
Creator, Owner, and Giver of all things, material and 
spiritual, and is indispensable to a life of obedience, love, 
and gratitude. 


3. Solves Problems 


Stewardship, in its full New Testament meaning, in- 
volves responsibility to man, and provides a solution for 
the social, racial, industrial, and economic problems which 
confront the modern world. 


4. How Acknowledged 


Suitable acknowledgment of our stewardship can be 
made only as we set aside for God’s service such measure 
of time, possessions, and vital energies as a scripturally 
enlightened judgment demands. 


5. Relation to Money 


Stewardship involves both the beneficent use of money, 
13 


14 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP PRINCIPLES 


and the spirit and method of its acquisition, investment, 
and expenditure. 


The Christian’s total attitude toward material things is 
of great importance to himself, the church, and the 
world in this time of social reconstruction. 


6. Proportionate Beneficence 


Stable provision can be made for the support of King- 
dom enterprises only through the systematic, proportion- 
ate, and adequate contributions of Christian people. 


System should be adjusted to the needs involved; propor- 
tion should be relative to personal income and agreeable 
to the Scriptures. The dedication of the tenth of income 
offers a basic principle of beneficence supported by cen- 
turies of religious custom, biblical teaching, and joyful 
experience. While emphatically recommended to the 
people of our churches, it must not be regarded as ex- 
hausting the meaning of stewardship, but rather as the 
beginning of our service to the Kingdom. 


%. Education in Stewardship 


Stewardship instruction should be included in the pro- 
gram of religious education of both home and church. It 
is of primary importance in building the type of Chris- 
tian character most urgently needed at this hour. 


Religious leaders and heads of families should be dili- 
gent to understand and practice Christian stewardship 
and to instruct in its principles all who come under their 
care. That the acceptance of stewardship may speedily 
become universal, every steward should be encouraged 
to bear witness to his faith and to urite in such steward- 
ship movement as his communion provides. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


From a large number of modern books that discuss 
more or less definitely some phase of Christian steward- 
ship the following have been selected as especially helpful 
and as well adapted to reading and study in connection 
with this volume: 


Agar, F. A.: Modern Money Methods. The Stewardship 
of Infe. 

Babbs, Arthur V.: The Law of the Tithe. 

Bishop of Oxford: Introduction to Property. 

Calkins, Harvey Reeves: A Man and His Money. The 
Victory of Mary Christopher. The Centenary at Old 
First. Stewardship Starting Points. 

Cushman, Ralph 8.: The New Christian. The Message of 
Stewardship. Adventures in Stewardship. 

Duncan, John Wesley: Our Christian Stewardship. 

Eddy, Sherwood: Hverybody’s World. 

Ingalls, W. R.: Wealth and Income. 

Lansdell, Henry: The Sacred Tenth. 

McConaughy, David: Money, the Acid Test. 

Morrill, Guy L.: You and Yours. 

Pearce, Ellen Quick: Women and Stewardship. 

Representative Preachers: Modern Stewardship Sermons. 

Robinson, Emma A.: Stewardship Stories for Boys and 
Girls. More Stewardship Stories for Boys and Girls. 

Ross, Edward Alsworth: Wealth: Its Acquisition and Use. 

Sayler, James L.: American Tithers. 

Versteeg, John M.: The Deeper Meaning of Stewardship. 

Wilson, Bert: The Christian and His Money. 


In addition to these books a very extensive pamphlet 
literature on stewardship is now available, which may be 
secured, in most cases, by addressing the various denomina- 
tional promotional agencies or the officers of the missionary 
boards and societies. 


15 


For Reference and Study 


1 Pet. 4. 10. 
According as each hath received a gift, ministering it 
among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of 
God. 


Luke 16. 10-13. 

He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: 
and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also 
in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the un- 
’ righteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true 
riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is 
another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No 
servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the 
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and 
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 


Psa. 1. 
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the 
wicked, 
Nor standeth in the way of sinners, 
Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers: 
But his delight is in the law of Jehovah; 
And on his law doth he meditate day and night. 
And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of whee, 
That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, 
Whose leaf also doth not wither; 
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. 
The wicked are not so, 
But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. 
Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, 
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 
For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous; 
But the way of the wicked shall perish. 


CHAPTER I 
THE DIMENSIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


An Otp TrutH REBORN 


Tur period through which the church is at this mo- 
ment passing has witnessed a widespread revival of in- 
terest in Christian stewardship. It is in truth a revival, 
not a new creation, for stewardship is as old as Chris. 
tianity, as old as the faith of men. The present move- 
ment is therefore only the rebirth of a centuries-old, oft- 
preached, repeatedly tried principle of consecration. It 
was in the world decades and centuries before our belated 
attention was called to its claims. 

A revival of stewardship.—As the burning stretches of 
an Australian desert bloom forth, after a night of rain, 
like a garden of roses; or, as some long-submerged moun- 
tain, gradually lifted by the resistless heaving of the 
earth’s crust from its submarine slumber of geologic ages, 
suddenly shakes off its blanket of dripping seas and stands 
forth as the crest of a new continent, so the ancient and 
indispensable doctrine of Christian stewardship has blos- 
somed forth again, reemerging into the religious conscious- 
ness of our day. It is not a new conception nor a fresh 
discovery, it is not an invention for which any Chris- 
tian sect or leader can claim proprietary rights; it is the 
recognition of an old and essential truth, and the noblest 
thing we can hope for it is that its acceptance and ac- 
knowledgment may speedily become both world-wide and 
permanent, and that our formal confessions of steward- 
ship obligation may kindle to a living faith. 


GETTING OuR BEARINGS 


Confused meanings.—It is important, first of all, that 
we get a fairly clear conception of the extent and mean- 
ing of stewardship. Most people who give it any thought 
at all are quite satisfied with a distant, vague, general 

17 


18 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


view of it. As the scurrying tourist trains his field- 
glass upon the distant pyramids, gives solemn assent to 
their mystery, and passes on; or sees Niagara in a hasty 
peep from beneath his Pullman window shade, accepting 
drowsily its reputed grandeur, so these busy disciples 
bestow a hurried glance on stewardship, recognize its 
kinship with other established doctrines, note its general 
and large significance, and generously offer it the im- 
partial hospitality extended to all respectable newcomers. 
To such “stewardship is the greatest thing in sight” and 
“will solve all our problems’; but “why” and “how” are 
given no thought. To others stewardship has never been 
seen except on one side and from one standpoint. For 
these it means only one thing: “How can we raise money 
for the church?” or “How much must I give?” Now, 
manifestly, all these people are right in part. They have 
glimpsed something true and real. But they have only 
touched the fringe. Stewardship is all that they have 
seen—and vastly more. But how much more? ‘That is 
our problem. 

A careful inspection.—Really to grasp the meaning of 
stewardship and what it implies in our own lives we must 
“walk about” stewardship and “go round about” it, get- 
ting at the meaning from every possible angle. Since it 
is an ancient and venerable word, coming to us through — 
various languages, and since the original concept has 
passed through centuries of changing history, we ought to 
discover what we can of its first significance, of what it 
meant to those who originally employed it, of its mean- 
ing in the Scriptures, of any changes through which it 
may have passed, of any growth or enlargement it may 
have gained in the process of the years, and of what. it 
now means of privilege, opportunity, and duty to the 
men, women, and children of to-day. Unfortunately only 
fragmentary information is available, yet enough for our 
need. 


ORIGIN OF THE STEWARDSHIP IpEA 


Genesis of a word.—Stewardship” is an interesting 
word. In its English form our lexicographers trace it 


DIMENSIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 19 


away back to the Anglo-Saxon stigweard, or stiweard; 
from stig (a sty, or pen, for cattle), and weard (a guard). | 
So the original “steward,” among our primitive ances- | 
tors, was the keeper of the pig sty, the protector of the 
cattle—a humble and unpromising beginning, to be sure; 
yet not so insignificant, after all. The stigweard at 
least had a job and unquestionably a steady one. He had 
in charge some of the most valuable and elusive prop- 
erty his master possessed. Every hour of the day he must 
be on the alert to provide ample food and to insure pro- 
tection, and by night his responsibility was not dimin- 
ished. The primitive foes of life and property—disease, 
drought, famine, pestilence, poisonous reptiles and in- 
sects, savage beasts, cattle thieves, vengeful enemies, 
treacherous neighbors—were the risks he took in fellowship 
with his master and his master’s cattle. In addition was 
doubtless some considerable measure of responsibility for 
productiveness, increase, growth, marketability, replace- 
ment, and betterment. It was a little job, but big with 
possibilities of worth and growth. Any common man 
could be a steward, but to be a good steward he must be 
wide awake, energetic, diligent, tactful, intelligent, kind, 
patient, brave, and absolutely reliable.t 

A great office—So we are not surprised that, as time 
went on in old England, and society and business in- 
creased in complexity, and property increased in variety 
and value, the lord of the manor, looking out over count- 
Jess acres dotted with the villages and cottages of his 
tenants, found in his steward his most valued and trusted 
helper, “the chief officer of the manor who, on behalf of 
his lord, transacted its legal business.” Nor are we sur- 
prised to learn that the first of the great offices of state 
in England is that of the “Lord High Steward.” 

The steward in history—The importance of the stew- 
ardship idea, among peoples still more ancient and of 
other languages (for stewardship, in a highly developed 
form, existed long before European history began), is 
further illustrated by the responsibility placed upon men 


1A most interesting modern parallel is pictured in Jim Nabours, Texas cattle- 
man, in Emerson Hough’s North of Thirty-Siz. 


20 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


occupying positions corresponding to those we have ob- 
served among our English forefathers. Under the Roman 
republic the procurator was the fully accredited agent of 
a private citizen, the steward of. his affairs; while in later 
years the procurator was the responsible governor of the _ 
Roman province. The Hebrew word Sar, commonly ren- 
dered “prince” in our English Bible, really stands for an’ 
honored steward—one who manages or superintends the 
household of another. Such a servant was Eliezer, first - 
mentioned in Gen. 15. 2 and characterized more fully in ~ 
Gen. 24, who was to Abraham “the elder of his house, that — 
ruled over all that he had,” “having all goodly things 
of his master’s in his hand.” In Tit. 1. 7 Paul tells us 
that even “the bishop must be blameless, as God’s stew- 
ard”; and Peter (1 Pet. 4. 10) thinks of all disciples 
“as good stewards,” who have at their disposal “the mani- — 
fold grace of God.” In the parable of Jesus (Luke 16) © 
the “unjust steward” had been so completely trusted with — 
all his lord’s financial affairs that even the tricky adjust- | 
ments he made after notice of his dismissal were honored — 
by his master in the subsequent settling up of his business. | 
Thus, little by little, although in our own country the 
word “steward” and the function of stewardship have 
made little impression, the full significance of “steward-— 
ship” begins to dawn upon us. As Dr. Harvey Reeves © 
Calkins suggests: “A steward is the loyal partner and — 
trusted representative of another. Stewardship is alive 
with personal meanings. The word comes out of the 
vivid life of the Orient. There is color in it, and the 
glow of living things.” “A steward may be a servant, but 
. only in a high and exalted sense.” | 


wee x 


CoMPARISON WirH OTHER RELATIONSHIPS 


The best word.—Further light will be shed upon the 
splendid significance of stewardship by a still more de- 
_ tailed comparison with various other human relationships 
that bear certain resemblances to that of steward—for ex- 
ample, “partner.” Many persons have felt that “partner- 
ship” is a better term to use when considering the Chris- 
tian’s relation to God; and, indeed, since the word “stew- 


DIMENSIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 21 


ardship” has performed such an inconsiderable service in 
the everyday life of our Western world, and since to many, 
particularly to young people, it has borne a vague, rather 
indefinite, almost somber and repressive meaning, re- 
stricted entirely to what has seemed to be the self-effacing 
aspects of religious life, if a more modern, familiar, vital, 
radiant word, with equivalent value, can be made avail- 
able, let us not hesitate to adopt it. Let us first, however, 
see if, after all, “stewardship” is not precisely the word 
we want, representing the relationship we most need to 
reinstate in the religious thought and life of our own 
time. i 
Contrasts.—The “steward” is in fact a “partner” with 
his master. He is also a “servant” and “employee,” per- 
haps a “manager,” “agent,” “superintendent,” “director,” 
“executor,” “trustee,” sometimes even a “son,” but never 
a “slave.” But when we attempt to translate these vari- 
ous expressions into terms of relationship with God we 
discover considerable lack of adaptability in every case. 
The word “servant” is broad but it is also vague, for a 
servant may be an exalted and thoroughly trusted official 
or he may be most insignificant, inefficient, and trusted 
not at all. An employee is not always a steward. He 
may need watching and coaching and prodding and penal- 
izing every hour of the day. No such employee could long 
continue as a steward. A trustee is in a sense a steward 
and so is an executor, but we think of both as restricted 
to certain narrow and prescribed lines of activity, largely 
bounded by insurmountable legal prescriptions. We feel 
the same general limitation in the case of an agent or a 
director in the business world, and of superintendent and 
manager in the industrial. A partner is not a steward; 
he is of right an equal, at least to the extent of his veto 
power, and legally stands in a higher relationship than a 
steward even though he may be neither sufficiently compe- 
tent nor trustworthy to be a steward. Men may always 
be colaborers with God, but only in the most highly figura- 
tive sense can they be partners with him. And “now are 
we the sons of God,” but even sons are not always worthy 
or competent to be stewards. 


22 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


A lofty task—But the steward—consider now his hon- 
orable station! He is absolutely trusted by his master 
—trusted with his property, his plans, his reputation; 
trusted when his master’s back -is turned, when he is 
absent, when he cannot trace the action; trusted with 
the interests, safety, and welfare of his fellow servants; 
trusted to carry on confidential and diplomatic affairs of 
high importance. Not only is his integrity involved, but 
his tact, his judgment, his business capacity, and particu- 
larly his initiative and energy. His opportunity is not 
alone to keep intact the things intrusted to him but to 
devise and effect the greatest possible enlargement and 
stabilizing of his master’s interests. No ordinary partner, 
trustee, or manager enters into such hearty, personal, and 
intimate relationship. 

Integrity, witiative, mdependence, energy, loyalty, all 
within certain broad and well-defined limits of dignified 
. responsibility—that is stewardship. 

Not a sacrifice.—So stewardship is not an irksome sacri- 
fice to be made, not a weary, bootless burden to be borne; 
it is something exalted to which we must measure up, 
a privilege to be devoutly welcomed, a desirable and sacred 
trust that the best of men may well covet, an honor be- 
stowed only on such as are worthy to receive it. Only 
Christians of quality are ever genuine Christian stewards, 
and a man is not to be commiserated but congratulated 
when he subscribes his hand to the responsibilities of 
stewardship. He becomes, by his own acceptance, God’s 
chosen representative. 


Otp TESTAMENT CONCEPTIONS 


We wonder, now, if our conception of stewardship meas- 
ures up to the standard of Jesus the Master. Perhaps we 
can reassure ourselves by calling to mind the stewardship 
ideals he must have received as he read or listened to the 
Old Testament Scriptures in the synagogue, by recollect- 
ing some of his own choice utterances, and by recalling 
something of what was in the mind of his apostles. 

Jesus’ training.—In the synagogue Jesus heard the 


DIMENSIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 23 


solemn truths of God’s regal ownership: “In the be- 
ginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 
1. 1). “The earth is Jehovah’s, and the fulness thereof” 
(Psa. 24. 1). “Every beast of the forest is mine. . . 
the cattle . . . the birds. . .” (Psa. 50. 10-12). “The 
silver is mine, and the gold . . .” (Hag. 2. 8). “All 
souls are mine” (Hzek. 18. 4). He learned, too, of man’s 
authority and responsibility and of the sure rewards of 
faithful stewardship: “Let them have dominion over... 
all the earth. . .” (Gen. 1. 26, 30). 


“What is man? . 
Thou hast made him but little lower than God. 
Thou madest him to have dominion ... 
Thou hast put all things under his feet. . . .” (Psa. 8. 3-9). 


“Tt is he that giveth thee power to get wealth” (Deut. 
8.18). “The tithe . .. is Jehovah’s” (Lev. 27. 30-34). 


“Blessed is the man... 

He shall be like a tree .. ee (Psa. 1. 1-6). 

“No good thing will he withhold from them that walk up- 
rightly” (Psa. 84. 11). 

“Honor Jehovah with thy substance 

So shall thy barns be filled .. .” (Prov. 3, 9, 10). 


“Will a man rob God? yet ye robme ... Bring ye the 
whole tithe ...and prove me...” (Mal. 3. 8, 10). 
“Beware lest thou forget Jehovah thy God ... and... 
say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand 
...” (Deut. 8. 11-20). Often at Mary’s knee and at 
Joseph’s family altar Jesus doubtless listened to the story 
of faithful Abraham, of Abel’s meek obedience, of Dreamer 
Joseph’s integrity, of Moses’ great decision, of Joshua’s 
fidelity, of Samuel’s unselfish patriotism, of David’s 
princely loyalty, of Ehjah’s unflinching courage, of Dan- 
iel’s long life of rectitude and piety, of Mordecai’s dogged 
determination and Esther’s queenly daring; and of many 
a national hero whose name has perished from history, but 
“who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
ness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, 


24. STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


turned to flight armies of aliens.” All these were stewards 
of a lofty quality. . 


JESUS’ COMPLETER IDEAL 


‘So Jesus goes forth to his ministry to give the world 
a new and still broader conception of stewardship than 
“the fathers” had given him. We get it in the Golden 
Rule, the good Samaritan, the talents; in “Consider the 
lilies,” “Seek ye first the kingdom ... and all... 
shall be added,” “It is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive”; in the widow’s mite, “These ought yet to have 
done,” “Render unto Cesar . . . and unto God.” We 
find it in his promises: “No man hath left house . . . or 
lands, for my sake, and for the gospel’s sake, but he shall 
receive a hundredfold.” Lands? Yes, with trouble 
enough, but with “life.” We hear it in his warnings: “Be 
not anxious . . . No mam can serve two masters,” “He 
that is faithful in little will be faithful in much,” “Ex- 
cept your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the 

. Pharisees, ye cannot enter the kingdom,” “Watch,” 
“When the Son of Man shall come in his glory” he shall 
judge them according to their stewardship. The “rich 
fool,” who might have served man and God with countless 
stores, and the “rich young ruler,” who was steward of vast 
treasure, time, and talent but made “the great refusal,” 
both sink in pitiful oblivion. 

Apostolic standards.—Still further enlargement of the 
stewardship ideal is made by his apostles—the men who 
had caught his spirit and his broader conceptions. Paul — 
praises the liberality of the Macedonians, who have given 
“beyond their power,” and exhorts to the same spirit his 
Corinthian friends, reminding them of “the grace of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, yet for your 
sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might 
become rich.” He tells his young assistant, Timothy, that 
“sodliness is profitable . . . having promise of the life 
that now is and of that which i is to come.” “If God be for 
us,” he cries to the Romans, “who can be against us?” 
He tells the Kphesians that “no covetous man. . . hath 
any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ.” Twice he 


DIMENSIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 20 


tells his readers that our “bodies are temples” and must 
be kept sacred. He cannot refrain from preaching because 
“a, stewardship is intrusted” to him. He tells the Romans 
that “no man liveth to himself,” since “whether we live 
or die we are the Lord’s.” 

Modern confirmation.—All these high standards of 
the Old and New Testaments are confirmed and reen- 
forced by the conclusions of modern science and philoso- 
phy. Let a man once admit that we are all children of 
a common Father, that God is our Maker, and all we are 
brethren, and it follows, “as the night the day,” that our 
stewardship obligations involve all human values and con- 
tacts. We are stewards of the body that God has given us, 
stewards charged with the treasures and possibilities of 
our heredity, stewards of our talents, of our days and 
hours and years, of our temperament and influence, of 
our friends and of strangers and of even our enemies, of 
our accumulations and possessions, and of all spiritual re- 
sources. With the possession of all these opportunities are 
we intrusted, that we may protect, preserve, correct, in- 
crease, and multiply them, and we shall be held responsi- 
ble for the outcome in every case. 


For Srupy AND DIscussIon 


1. Do you know at what period in Christian history 
the doctrine of “the sovereignty of God” was uppermost 
in the thought of the church? the principle of “religious 
liberty”? insistence upon “the witness of the Spirit’? 
the duty of “world evangelization”? the duty of “service” ? 

2. Look up the meaning and history of “steward” in 
the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Century Dictionary, 
Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, and in any other refer- 
ence books at your disposal. 

3. Read the history of the stewardship idea as outlined 
by Harvey Reeves Calkins in A Man and His Money, 
Part IT. 

4, What is the difference between Christian service and 
Christian stewardship ? 

5. Formulate in discussion a preliminary definition of 
stewardship. 


For Reference and tors 


Isa. 61. 1-3. | 

The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because J ehovah 
hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he 
hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim lib- 
erty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound; to proclaim the year of Jehovah’s favor, and 
the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; 
to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them a 
garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called 
trees of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah, that he may be 
glorified. 


John 1, 1-4, 9, 14. 

In the beginning was the Word, and: the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning 
with God. All things were made through him; and without 
him was not anything made that hath been made. In him 
was life; and the life was the light of men. . . . There was the 
true light, even the light which -lighteth every man, coming 
into the world. . . . And the Word became flesh, and dwelt 
among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begot- 
ten from the Father), full of grace and truth. 


Heb.) T242;/2: 

God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the 
end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he ap- 
pointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the 
worlds. 


Phil. 2. 5-11. 

Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 
who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an 
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, 
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of 
men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled him- 
self, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the 
cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto 
him the name which is above every name; that in the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things 
on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue 
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
the Father. 


CHAPTER IT 
THE SPRINGS OF STEWARDSHIP 


Tur Day Star APPEARS 


Mucu that has been said in the foregoing chapter 
would doubtless have been true had the Son of Man re- 
mained unknown to the world. God would still be Creator, 
Owner, and Giver. Man would still be creature, tenant, 
and steward, under grateful obligation to his Maker and 
in fraternal relation to his fellow man. Stewardship would 
be an outstanding principle in human life, and its exac- 
tions as inescapable as they are to-day. But stewardship as 
Christian disciples now know it would not exist. For the 
stewardship that sets the moral standards of the world 
to-day is Christian stewardship. 

Different since Jesus.—At the moment when Jesus be- 
gan his ministry, stewardship took on new meaning and 
depth. ‘Transfigured by this divinely dynamic Force, it 
was instantaneously charged with a vitality hitherto un- 
known and began a process of infinite expansion. If it 
ever was true that the claims of stewardship could be dis- 
charged by conformity to legal enactment, it is true no 
longer; for in the wide range that Jesus gives to earthly 
relationships the claims of stewardship are as fathomless 
as the needs of humanity. As other celestial luminaries 
fade into the light of common day when the morning sun 
arises, so all other considerations of stewardship obligation 
and privilege pale into invisibility when the Sun of Right- 
eousness arises in the hearts of men. Henceforth all stand- 
ards of stewardship center in him. 


THE SPIRIT OF JESUS 


The first ingredient of the Christian conception of stew- 
ardship is the spirit and temper of Jesus. How he bore 
himself in his earthly life, his total attitude toward every 
responsibility and contact, sets for the Christian the 
standard for his own stewardship. 


27 


28 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


Attitude to task—An interesting manifestation of the 
spirit of Jesus is that in which he reveals his attitude 
toward his task, the temper in which he undertakes his 
earthly mission. There is visible no consciousness of 
outward compulsion, no evidence of reluctance, no slight- 
est suggestion of sacrificial martyrdom. No negative pole 
drives Jesus to his destiny; the positive magnetism of 
loyal love irresistibly draws him. 

Obedience.—His spirit is the spirit of a son’s obedience. 
Like the explosion of a bombshell must the assertion of 
this twelve-year-old boy have smitten upon the con- 


sciences of those who heard him: “Knew ye not that I - 


must be in my Father’s house?” In all the wisdom of” 
- succeeding centuries there is no going beyond this. And 
while thus exalting his mission he subordinates his per- 
sonal prerogatives: “The Son can do nothing of himself.” 
“Tf I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father 
that glorifieth me.” And, crowning all, in a statement 
whose revelation of divine method is unsurpassed in the 
pages of Scripture, he declares: “My Father worketh even _ 
until now, and I work.” Thus does the Master mirror to” 
the world the spirit of the Christian steward. : 

Service.—The spirit of Jesus is the spirit of service. “I 
am among you as he that serveth.” “The Son of man 
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” In that 
strange scene “before the feast of the passover” (an event 
which Simon Peter almost resents as an exaggerated form ~ 
of humility), where the world’s great Teacher equips him- 
self with basin.and towel to wash the dusty feet of fisher- 
men, we hear again the Master disclosing the spirit of his 
mission to men. “Know ye,” he asks, “what I have done 
to you? . . . I have given you an example, that ye also 
should do as I have done to you.” Humility, yes, and 
such as the world had never seen; but the great lesson is 
this: Mastery is measured by service; greatness first finds 
itself in helpfulness. The steward of God is the helper of 
men. 

Patience.—This spirit is the spirit of patience. “Thou 
shalt deny me, but I have prayed for thee, and when thou 
hast turned again stablish thy brethren,” said he to Peter 


THE SPRINGS OF STEWARDSHIP 29 


before the sad denial. “The kingdom of heaven is like 
unto leaven.” “First the blade, then the ear, after that 
the full corn in the ear.” “My Father worketh even until 
now”’—and worketh forevermore! The Christian steward 
works patiently. 

Loyalty.—The spirit of Jesus is the spirit of loyalty. 
No fair-weather friend was he. “I have called you 
friends,” says this world Genius to a promiscuous group 
of men. And “having loved his own, . . . he loved them 
to the uttermost.” John, his “beloved disciple,’ in the 
agony of the cross he did not forget. “I pray for them” 
was the burden of his petition before the tragic night. 
That mother, heroine of the world’s greatest romance, 
through whose anguished heart the sword pierced, was 
the honored legatee in his last will and testament: “Behold 
thy son! . . . Behold thy mother!” For Lazarus, his 
friend, he risked the hostility of Jerusalem. Peter, who 
shared in his pilgrimages, partook of his bread, and in 
the last great terror repudiated him before the court, he 
did not cast away but restored to full apostleship. Strang- 
est of all, as poor, luckless Judas sat at the Last Supper, 
plotting his great Friend’s overthrow, that Friend dipped 
and passed to him the choicest morsel, as if to say: “Judas, 
I love you still; I love you to the uttermost; it is not too 
late to offer you the best God’s kingdom affords. Recon- 
sider: all shall be forgiven and forgotten.” The spirit 
of the steward is loyalty. 


THE VISION OF JESUS 


A aieener —Like all the world’s great servants, seers, 
/and saviors Jesus was a Dreamer. Until young men see 
visions, and old men dream dreams, there can be no awak- 
ening to larger life, no birth of great leadership. Had not 
Jesus been an Idealist he could never have looked beyond 
the low ranges of Judea’s hills or out over the Mediter- 
ranean, beyond the temporal bounds of Cesar’s growing 
empire. The world would have sunk beneath its sor- 
rows, and society, stagnant with sin and despair, would 
have perished. But Jesus saw visions. 

Straying men.—He had a vision of men’s hopeless 


* 


30 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


aimlessness. As multitudes followed him to the desert, 
hardly knowing why, and hung upon his words, and ea- 
gerly clutched the portions of bread and fish his marvelous 
hands distributed, and waited in wondering expectation, 
“he was moved with compassion,” “because they were as 
sheep not having a shepherd.” | 

An expanding Kingdom.—He had the vision of an en- 
larging kingdom and of an expanding church. “Neither 
for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe 
on me through their word.” 

Redeemed humanity.—He saw a redeemed humanity. 
“T . . . will draw all men unto me.” “They shall come 
from east and west, north and south, and shall sit down 
in the kingdom of God.” John’s apocalyptic vision of 
the “multitude whom no man could number” is only the 
reflection of what his Master foresaw in the days of his 
flesh. 

Christians only.—Into this vision the Christian steward 
can enter. This was impossible to the Jew. His concep- 
tion of Jehovah as the exclusive property of his own 
people forbade. Isaiah faintly glimpsed it. Other seers 
dimly felt its reality. But for Jew or pagan, in general, 
it was unthinkable. Even Peter, after three years with 
the Master, after the flames of Pentecost, after the first 
broadening experiences of apostleship, was astounded at 
its discovery. 

Human brotherhood.—But the Christian ‘steward can 
look abroad. For him there are no bounds of class or 
condition, of caste or race, of time or distance, of tongue 
or continent. All are units of that “great multitude” for 
whose helplessness the Master “was moved with compas- 
sion”; all are sons of a common Father, brothers “of one 
blood,” potential “heirs of God and joint heirs with 
Christ.” He can see, too, not only the breadth but the 
depth of redemption. All nations are included, but also 
all provinces of the human heart, and all the possibilities 
of human character. The earth is not alone to be filled 
with the mustard tree of the gospel, but to be permeated 
through and through with the leaven of the gospel. The 
world to be saved is to become a saved world. 


THE SPRINGS OF STEWARDSHIP 31 


Such was the vision of Jesus. And because it was his 
vision it straightway became his program. Seeing a 
world’s need was equivalent to recognizing his eternal 
stewardship to serve that need. This, being the vision of 
the Christian steward, is also his program. 


THe MOorIvES oF JESUS 


Every consideration which moved the Master to his 
ministry of mercy was altruistic. No selfish incitement 
dims the splendor of his purpose. It was all for others’ 
sake. “Look out, and not in; and lend a hand,” sprang 
from the Peasant of Galilee. 

Compassion.—The motive that most deeply touched the 
people of his day, the one that keeps his memory green in 
a troubled world, was his compassion. He was full of 
pity; sensitive with sympathy for the vague soul hunger 
and the physical suffering all about him. The miracles 
that drew the curious multitudes had, no doubt, their 
evidential value; but their strange variation from other 
miracles of legend or Scripture is the fact that they are 
performed for the relief of suffering. Even the prospec- 
tive hunger of a multitude touched the heart of this 
“man of good will” and moved him to the great social 
miracle of the gospel story, while the hope-deferred shep- 
herdlessness of wandering humanity wrung from his soul 
the anguished confession: “I have compassion on the 
multitude.” Pity for the blind eyes, the deaf. ears, the 
paralyzed limbs, the epileptic nerves, the leprosy-polluted 
bodies, the fevered children, the widowed mothers, the 
bereaved sisters, the sin-racked consciences, kept him 
running on errands of mercy as long as he lived. 

Love.—Behind this motive of compassion was the deeper 
motive of love. As no other man had ever been able to 
do, he saw the actual and potential worth in men and 
loved them for what they were. A young man so morally 
feeble that, facing the greatest opportunity ever offered 
a human being, he yet could make “the great refusal,” 
Jesus “loved.” How much more, those who reciprocated 
his affection and gave up all for him! ‘To such he de- 
clared: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved 


32 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


you.” The depth of this love he demonstrated when he 
laid down “his life for his friends.” This all-mastering 
love he traces back to the very purpose of his incarnation: 
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only be- 
gotten Son.” If we couple with this his own astounding 
assertion “He that. hath seen me hath seen the Father,’ 
we face the infinite and ever-enduring motive of the uni- 
verse—the love of God for all that is. In this impelling 
love the disciple of Jesus may share. The Christian 
steward who does not share it is not a steward; he is a 
servant. The great undershepherds of the race have shared 
it. The missionary enterprises and the reform movements 
of the ages have been born of compassion for men. 
Concrete cases.—David Livingstone, from the hour 


~ when his youthful imagination beheld Robert Moffatt’s 


“smoke from a thousand villages whose inhabitants had 
never heard of Jesus” to that somber twilight in his pre- 
mature old age when, fever-consumed and death-smitten, 
he staggered into Chitambo’s village in Ilala, there to 
breathe out his dying prayer for Africa, is an illustration 
not to be forgotten of that goodly fellowship whose sacri- 
fices of love have joined with the mightiness of God to 
‘heal the open sore of the world.” Francis Xavier, on 
his face before God, crying: “Amplius, Amplws!’ (More, 
Lord, more); “only save thy pagan children”; George 
Whitefield’s “Lord, give me souls or take my soul”; 
Moses, facing Jehovah at Sinai and demanding: “Save | 
Israel or blot me out”; Paul, declaring: “I could wish 
myself accursed from Christ for my kinsmen”; Melville 
B. Cox, with boyish abandon but apostolic fervor, exclaim- 
ing: “Let a thousand fall before Africa be given up!” 
Henry Martyn, “lying in tears all night in prayer for 
India,” tell us how, in multiplied instances, God’s faith- 
ful stewards have held their lives “not dear unto them- 
selves,” that they might “fill up that which is lacking of 
the afflictions of Christ.” And time would fail us to re- 
call the yearning of Wilberforce and of Lincoln for the 
bondmen of their day, of Shaftesbury for the child toilers 
of England, of Pitkin for the savage Boxers who mur- 


dered him, of Bashford for the millions of China, of 


THE SPRINGS OF STEWARDSHIP 33 


Carey and Judson and Thoburn and Fisher for the sorrow- 
ing masses of India. Suffice it to remember that, in tune 
with the measureless love of Jesus for men, they offered 
the stewardship of time and talents and energies, that 
they might render to men the highest good. 


Tue CHoices or JEsus 


Decision vital—The thing that matters is a man’s 
choice. It is not one’s spirit, nor his motive, that deter- 
mines the outcome; not what the good man wishes, or 
the young Christian prefers, that counts. It is what he 
chooses. Jacob, with magnifient resolutions, still stag- 
gered along after the self life. Reuben, great, generous, 
big-hearted brother, but “unstable as water,’ was a fail- 
ure. Judas, who loved the Master and gave up much for 
him, loved silver better and became the archtraitor. But 
Moses drove the nail of resolution to the head and clinched 
it; he crossed the bridge and burned it; by faith he re- 
fused a future empire, “choosing rather to share ill 
treatment . . . than to enjoy the pleasures of sin.” 

Jesus tested.—Jesus’ career is a record of choices. On 
the mount of temptation he decides between pressing tem- 
porary advantage and eternal principles of right. In 
Gethsemane the conflict between normal human impulses 
and the ever-righteous will of God tests his character to 
the uttermost. Even on the cross he must choose between 
saving others and saving himself. All through his life 
we measure the steadfastness of his character by the 
choices he makes. 

Self-effacement.—F'rom first to last he chose the submer- 
gence of self—not with indolent abjectness nor cowardly 
self-depreciation but with magnificent deliberateness. It 
was the submergence of self for the sake of the emergence 
of man. His own will was a real will. The Man who 
trod seas and faced mobs and drove out devils could not 
have existed without one. But above his own he chose the 
will of God. “I came to do the will of my Father, and to 
finish his work.” He chose, at whatever cost, his task 
of redemption. It was not easy, not human nature. It 
cut squarely across every normal ambition. Yet, as the 


34 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


hour of the cross drew nearer, “he steadfastly set his face” 
toward it. Of the life that he was soon to offer he de- 
clared: “No one taketh it away from me; but I lay it 
down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I 
have authority to take it again.’ 

The disciple must choose.—The Christian steward who 
would follow in the steps of his Master must set his face 
deliberately and unwaveringly against everything that in- 
terferes with the will of God and. choose with equal stead- 
fastness everything that advances the plan of God. He 
is here not to demand his rights but to discharge his 
stewardship. In all lands and. ages, in all great human 
conflicts and among all religions, the men who have walked 
as gods, who, have shaped the future of the race, who have 
contributed to the triumph of the truth, have been the 
men who had the strength to choose the path God’s finger 
pointed. Contrast Buddha’s “great renunciation” with 
the rich young ruler’s “great refusal”; Peter with Judas; 
Abraham with Lot; Stephen with Ananias; Moses with 
Pharaoh; Paul with Agrippa; Washington with Arnold; 
Livingstone with Byron—a thousand | others who “by | 
faith have wrought righteousness,” or, failing in noble 
choosing, have “made shipwreck of faith.” The ulti- 
mate worth of our Christian stewardship hinges upon 
the wisdom and steadfastness of our choices. — 


Tur LoRDSHIP oF JESUS 


In the last analysis our Christian stewardship rests 
back upon the authority of Jesus. We are not following 
our own inventions nor running aiter “cunningly devised 
fables.” We are not giving of our time and talents be- 
cause we have an overflowing abundance that we do not 
need for ourselves, nor giving of. our money from any 
fatuous hope of gain or superstitious fear of loss; we are 
obedient stewards of God because Jesus wishes it, * because 
he has bidden us fulfill his plans, dedicate our talents and 
our time, contribute of our substance—and he is our Lord; 
there is no alternative. 

Jesus’ authority.—He has a right to assert his will over 
our lives. In his earthly ministry, while humble, obedi- 


THE SPRINGS OF STEWARDSHIP 35 


ent, loyal, patient, self-denying, Jesus never for a moment 
lost consciousness of his Lordship. Nor did he ever allow 
his disciples to forget it. Times have changed, customs 
are different, men better understand men and nature; but 
Jesus is still Lord, and his will for us is subject to no 
appeal or demur. With what calm assuredness this man 
of peace and gentleness assumes his astounding preroga- 
tives!—“Thy sins are forgiven thee,” “Lazarus, come 
forth,” “The Son of man is lord even of the sabbath,” 
“T could ask the Father, and he would send me more than 
twelve legions of angels,” “I will raise him up at the last 
day,” “I am the resurrection and the life,” “I am the 
light of the world,” “I and my Father are one.” 

Gur stewardship basis.—Primarily the Christian’s 
stewardship is based no longer on God’s creative power 
and providence, however real and urgent; nor on Old 
Testament law, however just and permanent; but, sence he 
is a Christran, on the Lordship of Jesus, on the wish and 
program, on the character and love and authority, of 
Jesus, the Lord and Giver of hfe. Let him who would 
be a loyal steward of this gracious Master remember 
that word spoken in blind maternal devotion by the vir- 
gin mother at the wedding feast: “Whatsoever he saith 
unto you, do it.” 


For Stupy AND Discussion 


1. What are some of the chief motives in human 
achievement. 

2. What was the ruling motive of Alexander the Great? 
of Napoleon? of Washington? of Lincoln? of Woodrow 
Wilson ? 

3. Give a brief sketch of the hfe of Livingstone; of 
James M. Thoburn. 

4. Illustrate the difference between preferences and 
choice. 

5. How does the history of Jesus affect our conception 
of stewardship ? 

6. Contrast the spirit of Moses with the spirit of Jesus. 

%. Contrast the vision of former Kaiser Wilhelm with 
the vision of Jesus. 


For Reference and Study 


Heb. 10. 5. 
A body didst thou prepare for me. 


Roms 225) 413 
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, 
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, hoky, acceptable to 
God, which is your spiritual service. 


TL Cor teen Gre, 

Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the 
Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man destroyeth the 
temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is 
holy, and such are ye. 


1 Cor. 6. 19, 20. 

Or know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit 
which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not 
your own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God there- 
fore in your body. 


Psa. 8. 3-9. 
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 
And the son of man, that thou visitest him? 
For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crownest him with glory and honor. 
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy 
hands; 
Thou hast put all things under his feet: 
All sheep and oxen, 
Yea, and the beasts of the field, 
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, 
Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas, 
O Jehovah, our Lord, 
How excellent is thy name in all the earth! 


CHAPTER III 
THE PHYSICAL LIFE 


Our Bopres A Trust 


Asset or liability?—In a former age the body was re- 
garded as an unfortunate and troublesome encumbrance 
to the soul. It was looked upon as a necessary evil of 
this earthly life and as a moral weight whose nature was 
constantly to submerge and destroy the spirit. Good men 
struggled against it, and the better the man the more 
fiercely he fought. The body must be “kept under,” in its 
rightful place of humility, by lashings and fastings of 
various kinds and degrees. Only when the body should 
be completely subdued would the soul be safe for immor- 
tality. To-day we have learned to think of the body— » 
as the Scriptures had always intended—as one of God’s | 
most priceless gifts. A thoughtful reading of the Old © 
Testament compels a growing reverence for the physical | 
life; and the New Testament affirms that our bodies are 
temples of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
us, solemnly warning us that “if any man destroyeth the 
temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of 
God is holy.” 

The soul’s medium.—The disclosures of modern science 
fully confirm this high estimate of the body. The body 
is the organ of human activities. The mind has no means 
of communication with the world in which we live except 
through the body. Without the eye there is no light, no 
vision, no beauty; without the ear the world of harmony 
would be silent; without these senses, or those of touch, 
taste, or smell, the presence of any object would be ab- 
solutely unknown. Helen Keller, without sight or hear- 
ing, has made the acquaintance of the world in which she 
lives and achieved a remarkable degree of culture, but only 
after late and long and painful discipline through the 

37 


38 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


sense of touch. But what could even she have accom- | 
plished had not the eyes and ears of many solicitous | 
friends been available for her use? The body is the soul’s 
only medium of contact with the material world. It is [ 
one of God’s most priceless gifts. H 

Invested capital—We must regard our own bodies, 
then, as a sacred stewardship with which God has in- 
trusted us. They are a part of the capital he has placed 
in our hands for investment. He expects us to make the 
most of them, to protect, preserve, develop, and use them, 
producing returns on this capital for the benefit of our- 
selves, our fellow men, and our divine Master. Our bodies 
are not our own, to use as we please; to pamper, indulge, 
mistreat, neglect, overwork, destroy; they belong to God, 
as a part of his creation, and are held by us in trust for 
his wise purposes. Incidentally, as an encouragement to 
us to use them faithfully, we soon learn that the better we 
use our bodies the greater benefits we ourselves receive. 
Indeed, it seems to be true of all the capital that God in- 
trusts to men that the steward receives by far the largest 
share of ra dividend. 

| Minp ConpitIionEep By Bopy 

Interaction.—Not only is physical achievement depend- 
ent on the body, but even the mental processes, as well as 
the moral characters and the spiritual experiences of men, 
are measurably conditioned by it. The shape of the skull | 
seems to determine, at least to some extent, the mental 
powers and the moral capacities of the man. Abnormal 
pressure upon the brain and sometimes upon other vital 
organs of the body, through some such accident as a blow 
upon the head, a fall, a bullet wound, a tumor, may induce 
intellectual inertia, melancholia, insanity—some form or 
degree of mental derangement; and a simple surgical op- 
eration frequently restores to perfect soundness what 
seemed to be a hopelessly disordered mind. 

Interdependence.—Sweet-tempered children, rendered 
morose and disagreeable by accident or disease, have been 
restored to cheerful good nature by the removal of the 
irritating cause. Positively misanthropic and criminal 


THE PHYSICAL LIFE 39 


tendencies have been suddenly produced and as marvelously 
cured by the infliction and the relief, in turn, of some 
physical injury to the nervous mechanism of the body. 
Men skilled in character analysis can guess, with a fair 
degree of accuracy, the probable type of mental irregu- 
larity, fanaticism, moral delinquency, or spiritual vagary 
characteristic of certain individuals by a careful observa- 
tion of facial expression and skull formation. Even hands 
and feet have been compelled to yield the secrets of char- 
acter. If the interaction between physical life and mental 
and moral character is so intimate, how profoundly im- 
portant is our full recognition of the stew ardship involved, 
and of our consequent responsibility ! 


Heipes AND HANDICAPS 


Early influence.—The advantage of physical health and 
bodily vigor in the achievement of success in life can 
hardly be overestimated. Through school days and voca- 
tional Paap on into the high pressure of full indus- 
trial, professional, or business activity, the value of health 
and the handicap of disease are constant and insistent 
factors. “I never had a chance to secure an education,” 
said a keen-minded farmer, “for all through my childhood 
and youth I was able to endure, on account of feeble 
health, only a few days of schooling at a time.” “I have 
never been able to carry out my plans or accomplish the 
half of what I longed to do,” exclaimed a faithful minister 
in a moment of impatience, “because this poor, miser- 
able, sickly body of mine wouldn’t let me!” “If I only 
had now the physical energies I blindly squandered in my 
dissolute youth,” declared a superbly successful business 
man, “I could count on ten more years of achievement 
and could put the world at my feet ; but now I must 
be content with only half a career.” The handicap or 
missing or wasted vitality is beyond estimate. 

Health values.—Contrast with these cases the a 
athletic equipment of Saul the Israelite, “the son of a 
mighty man of valor,” who, “from his shoulders and up- 
ward, was higher than any of the people.” No wonder he 
was able in person to lead the hosts of Israel to war, 


40 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


_ through forty years of strenuous conflict, with the savage 
tribes that beset them round about. The same inexhaust- 
ible stored-up energies are traceable in the career of his 
more illustrious successor, David, the ruddy shepherd 
boy, harpist, poet, songster, soldier, organizer, general, 
- monarch, and kingdom builder. - 

Physical equipment.—And who can think of Washing- 
ton, enduring the strain and the toil which fell to his lot, 
from the days of his perilous journey to Fort Pitt, through 
the French and Indian War, the harassing, crushing eight 
years of the Revolution, the long period of national uncer- 
tainty and chaos, and the two long, anxious terms as Presi- 
dent of an unproved republic, without calling to mind 
the superb physical equipment with which Providence had 
_ endowed him? Even more conspicuous, perhaps, in its 
_ special preparation for a superhuman task, was the tall, 
rugged, wiry, wilderness-disciplined body of Abraham 
Lincoln. The direction of the currents of human history 
can less easily be traced to any “fifteen decisive battles of 
_ the world” than to the powerful bodies of such men as 
Gladstone, Cromwell, “Oom Paul” Kruger, Benjamin 

Franklin, Bishop Newman, and a host of other victors. 


HeattH For Kinapom SERVICE 


. Fitness to endure.—Many of the greatest triumphs 

wrought in the service of Christ would doubtless have been 
impossible but for enormous and long-sustained physical 
exertion on the part of the leaders of the church at im- 
portant and crisal periods in her history. Saint Paul is 
the acknowledged founder of Western Christianity, the 
only organized Christianity of which we have any detailed 
knowledge, the only form that has historically amounted 
to anything in the world, the type that has determined 
our own faith and that of all the great communions of 
the modern world. Aside from the four Gospels, the 
Acts of the Apostles in which Paul was the chief actor, 
and the Epistles which flowed from his pen, the New 
Testament would hardly be worth the printing. But sup- 
pose Saint Paul had been intercepted by disease or had 
succumbed to constitutional feebleness in the midst of his 


THE PHYSICAL LIFE 4} 


eareer: who would have faced and conquered the cruel; 
subtle, stupid, putrid paganism of his age, implanting in 
its place those great churches of Christ which later were 
to dominate the religious life of Western Asia and of 
Kurope? Read, in 2 Cor. 11. 23-28, the catalogue of trials 
he endured as a clue to the enormous powers of endur- 
ance and achievement he possessed. 

Influence on history——The immeasurable consequences 
of the Protestant Reformation can hardly be appraised 
without taking into account the iron constitution, uncon- 
querable physique, and martial temper of its illustrious 
leader, Martin Luther, who, undaunted by the difficulties 
of his pioneer task, and beset on every side by ravening 
foes, translated the entire Scriptures into his native 
tongue, practically creating the German language, fear- 
lessly faced bishops, cardinals, popes, princes, kings, and 
emperors, and was not hesitant to hurl his challenge at 
the devil himself. His literary labors equal those of the 
most prolific writers. He preached almost daily, com- 
posed hymns, and conducted an enormous correspondence, 
with men of rank and learning, in both Latin and German. 
Even when aged, worn, and half blind he kept on with his 
toil as long as strength remained. All this Kingdom 
achievement was made possible through the agency of a 
stalwart body held in steadfast stewardship to Christ. 


TESTED IN WORLD EVANGELIZATION 


Terrific strain.—The same principle is illustrated in the 
lives of the world’s great missionary leaders. In 1542 
Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, arrived in India. 
Within ten years he had finished his earthly career just 
on the threshold of China, whose millions of souls he 
coveted for the cross. He had preached Christ in well- 
nigh a score of Eastern kingdoms, including Japan and 
possibly the Philippine Islands; had built hospitals, 
churches, and convents; had nursed the sick, rung his 
gospel bell from street to street, trained his converts, and 
suffered repeated persecution ; ‘had traversed many seas 
and won from raw heathenism thousands of converts. To 
his Roman Catholic friends he is the greatest apostle since 


42 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


Saint Paul: What but the stewardship of a willing body 
could have made possible such achievement ? 

To the uttermost.—The merest mention need be made 
of David Livingstone, whose record is already a part of 
the uncanonized scriptures of the modern church. His 
tough, wiry Scotch body, dedicated in childhood to hon- 
est toil and in youth to the rigors of Kingdom service, 
carried him to and through the jungles and swamps and 
rivers and perils of Africa until he had opened the world’s 
darkest continent to civilization, commerce, and Chris- 
tianity, and laid his aged, racked, crippled, and fevered 
bones to rest in Chitambo’s rude village in Ilala. This is 
another consecrated body, held in stewardship trust for 
Christ, numbered among those sacred “earthen vessels” 
made incandescent by his Spirit. | 

The common debt of all Protestantism to such heroic 
'-devotion may be illustrated from Methodist history. The 
small but steel-like frame of John Wesley, active every 
- moment of the day from early morning until the close of 
evening service, studying, preaching, translating, writing, 


publishing, holding conferences, composing hymns, build-— 


ing churches, traveling, summer and winter, in rumbling 
stage coaches, from thirty to fifty miles a day, untiring 
through fourscore years of toil, tells us of the worth to 
God’s kingdom of powers dedicated to his service. So, 
also, Francis Asbury, first active bishop of American Meth- 


odism, who through forty-four years of ceaseless toil, first. 


as missionary superintendent and then as bishop, traveled 
annually on horseback, his great episcopal circuit extending 
from the Androscoggin to the Gulf of Mexico and from 
the Atlantic to the Mississippi. And so, also, the giant 
evangelist William Taylor, “forty-niner,” California street 
preacher, evangelist to Canada, Australia, Asia, Africa, 
and South America; preacher of the gospel in every Eng- 
lish-speaking country in the world; founder of extensive 
_ missions in India, Africa, and Mexico; bishop of Africa 
and missioner to the whole world. 


THE STEWARDSHIP OF Broxen BopreEs 
In his strength.—Lest some faithful disciple of Jesus 


= Se 


THE PHYSICAL LIFE 43 


4 
Mews 
my 


shrink from the consecration of his physical powers in | 
stewardship to God because of bodily weakness, let us_ 
hasten to remind ourselves that, though the handicaps of 
ill health are great, some of the finest achievements the 
world has known have been wrought in despite of ill. 
health. eo 

Treasure in earthen vessels.—Paul’s “thorn in the i] 


flesh,” whatever loathsome or painful disease it may have | : 


been; Livingstone’s crushed arm, enfeebled through life — 
from the hon’s bite; Roosevelt’s frail and asthmatic | 
youth; Milton’s sightless eyes; Martyn’s disease-racked 
frame; Cox’s stricken body; Charles Lamb’s inherited in- 
sanity, with the burden of his poverty, of his aged and im- 
becile father, and of his beloved but crazy sister; Fanny © 
Crosby’s blindness; Cardinal Gibbons’ feeble frame; James | 
M. Buckley’s protracted fight with tuberculosis; and — 
Roger W. Babson’s climb from the invalid’s chair, where | 
he had been given up for “as good as dead,” to the emi- | 
nent position of master statistician—these and countless | 
others witness to us of what one can be in the face of | 
great obstacles. Who shall say that he who has tri- | 
umphed in some good cause, in spite of handicaps that ; 
discourage and disarm most men, is not worthy of more | 
especial honor, and that his faithful stewardship is doubly 

sweet to the Master? 


CHarcep Wirth Our Own DzstTINy 


Cooperation.—It is manifest that we are accountable to 
God for the care and the use of our bodies. He has 
promised to honor them by making them “temples of the 
Holy Spirit.” He condescends to use them in achieving 
his plans on earth of “good will toward men” and in 
spreading abroad his Kingdom. If he honors them, we 
should honor them; if he protects and nurtures them, we , 
ean do no less. Our duty to conserve and ure oH and/ 
discipline the body_is beyond question:—~ 

Character insurance.—Our stewardship of the buy in- 
volves everything pertaining to its growth—food, sleep, 
exercise, recreation, hours of labor and study. It in- 
volves our habits and companionships. The~influence of 


14 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


those who depress our moral standards and drag us down 
from our more lofty ideals must be subdued or eliminated. 
_ Base, sensual thoughts, words, and images; unkind and 
-gelfish deeds; untruth in word, look, or action—all these 
tend rapidly to disintegrate the moral character and thus 
to weaken and disqualify the body for service. Habits of 
temperance and chastity, of self-control, calmness, and 
spiritual poise, add courage and confidence to our minds 
and health and vigor to our bodies. So careful ought we 
_ to be to maintain the welfare of this body that when at 
last we lay it down, ripe and sound in old age, we may be 
able to say: “Father, I have used it well; I have added 
something for every talent intrusted to me.” 

Social dividends.—This stewardship of our bodies we 
owe to God not alone for his own glory but for the higher 
service we may render, through them, to his children, our 
fellow men. For we are not accountable to God alone; we 
are accountable to human~society...“‘None of us liveth to 
himself, and no man dieth to himself.” We are “mem- 
bers one of another.” Our obligations to the past and 
the-present are beyond compute. The civilization of to-— 
day we inherit from the past. All the learning, art, lit- 
erature, poetry, and song; all the skill, invention, and ma- 
terial achievement; all the treasure of wealth, architecture, 
and government, are contributions of our ancestors and 
contemporaries, and we are indebted to them beyond all 
ability to pay. We owe it both to the past and to the 
present to discharge these obligations to the fullest possi- 
ble extent. 

Stewards to posterity.—It is plain that by noble living 
we can-in some measure fulfill our duty to the present; 
but how shall we discharge our indebtedness to the past? 
Only by passing on our helpfulness to the future. Every 
human soul is under obligation to attempt to render to 
future generations a full equivalent for all he has received. 
from the generations of the past. Our debt to posterity 
means that we must consider, plan, and provide for pos- 
terity, that we must bequeath to our children and to 
our children’s children healthy bodies, healthy minds, 
healthy ideals, healthy impulses, heat characters. And 


THE PHYSICAL LIFE 45 


the more mental, moral, and spiritual self-control, the 
more temperance, the more chastity, the more lofty ideal- 
ism, the more unselfish service, the more holiness of life 
we can compress into the brief period of our earthly stew- 
ardship, the more fully shall we discharge this debt to 
those who follow us and to the God whose stewards we 
are. 


For Srupy AND DIscuUSssION 


1. In what way does the condition of the body affect 
character? Does character react on the body? Illustrate. 

2. Briefly sketch the result on history if Moses had 
died forty years younger; Wesley; Livingstone. 

3. Give a good example in modern life of some worthy 
achievement in spite of ill health. 

4. Describe temperance in its broader aspects. 


For Reference and Study 


Rom. 12. 2. 
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. 


Phil. 2. 5. 
Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus. 


2) Cor. 10.. 6. 
Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of 


Christ. 


LCOn a its 
For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that 
thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost 
thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? 


Matt. 25. 15-29. 

And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another 
one; to each according to his several ability; and he went on 
his journey. Straightway he that received the five talents went 
and traded with them, and made other five talents. In like 
manner he also that received the two gained other two. But 
he that received the one went away and digged in the earth, 
and hid his lord’s money. Now after a long time the lord of 
those servants cometh, and maketh a reckoning with them. 
And he that received the five talents came and brought other 
five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: 
lo, I have gained other five talents. His lord said unto him, 
Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful 
over a few things, I will set thee over many things; enter thou 
into the joy of thy lord. And he also that received the two 
talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two 
talents: lo, I have gained other two talents. His lord said 
unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been 
faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things; © 
enter thou into the joy of thy lord. And he also that had 
received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee 
that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, 
and gathering where thou didst not scatter; and I was afraid, 
and went away and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, thou hast 
thine own. But his lord answered and said unto him, Thou 
wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where 
I sowed not, and gather where I did not scatter; thou oughtest 
therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my 
coming I should have received back mine own with interest. 
Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and give it unto 
him that hath the ten talents. For unto every one that hath 
shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him 
that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE MENTAL LIFE 


WHERE Man Is SUPREME 


Human superiority—The characteristic that distin- © 
guishes the human being from other animals is the mind. 
The elephant is larger, the horse stronger, the bird swifter, _ 
the monkey more agile, the tortoise longer-lived. In all - 
but mental equipment man is surpassed by scores of other 
creatures; but mind has placed him so far above them all 
that he thinks of them only in terms of personal conven- ’ 
ience. ‘They are of interest to him only as they interfere 
with his more ambitious plans or contribute to his. 
welfare. 

Nature’s masterpiece.—The objects of inanimate nature 
are even more helpless under his hand. Faced with his | 
inventive genius, the seas, rivers, mountains, deserts, | 
winds, lightning, tamely yield obedience to his will. The 
product of field and vineyard, of orchard~-and..garden, 
the trees of the forest and the dense vegetation of the 
tropics, are alike of value only as they contribute to his 
comfort. In the wide world man is supreme. And this 
supremacy is entirely of the mind. As the late Professor ° 
John Fiske has pointed out, man is, by reason of this 
mental superiority, as far above any other form of animal 
life as the very highest form is above the smallest amceba 
floating in the warm salt sea. 


Tue Minp a Trust 


Strict accountability One of the most sacred items~? » 

of stewardship with which we are intrusted is the mind. © 
For the use of this mind in the wisest possible service to 
self and to fellow men we are solemnly accountable to God. 
It is important, therefore, for us to consider by what 
means we may best protect, most fully develop, and most 
wisely direct this mind, that this high stewardship may 
be faithfully discharged. 


47 


48 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


The mental spectrum.—lHarlier students of mental phe- 
» nomena were accustomed to speak of the mind under the 
forms of intellect, sensibility, and will) More mature 
reflection discloses the’ ‘practical difficulty of separating 
the mind into component parts, as the spectrum displays 
the primary colors of the rainbow, yet this somewhat arti- 
ficial division of an indivisible unit may assist us better 
to visualize the nature and possibilities of this our most 
important possession. “Shou shalt love the Lord thy 
_ God with all thy . . . mind.” This is our stewardship. 
_ How shall we proceed to fulfill it? ~~~ 


MENTAL Expanston 


Growth coutinuous.—The normal, healthy mind should . 


be a growing mind. It is as natural for the mind as for - 


the body to grow. The body, however, reaches its full size 


emi esse i 


early in life, while the mind is of such a nature that it ; 
keeps on growing and, if healthy, should continue to grow” 
as long as we live. We should therefore give thought-to. 


how we may assist our minds to grow and to keep on 


growing. 


Food for the mind.—The mind cannot grow without 


food, and the food of the mind is thought. The books, . 


papers, and magazines we read, the lessons we learn, the 
stories we hear, the conversations to which we listen, the 
sermons and lectures and concerts, the pictures and land- 
scapes and statues and architecture, the fields and for- 


eee 


ee 


ests and playgrounds and gymnasiums—everything, in — 
fact, which enters with new and stimulating experience © 


into our lives is food for the mind. 

Exercise.—Hqually important is mental exercise. The 
very act of assimilating thought affords a kind of mental 
exercise, though barely equivalent to the bodily exercise 
which a man takes when he chews and digests his meals. 
Something more taxing is needed, and not a few intellects 
are dwarfed by a pleasurable feeding without intellectual 
exertion. One may read an interesting book or listen to 
an eloquent sermon without mental growth. The book 
must be questioned, catechized, analyzed; the sermon must 
be considered, dwelt upon, practiced. The mind must not 


: 


4 


THE MENTAL LIFE 49 


only listen but ask why. Problems must be attacked and 
solved. Duties must not only be admired but striven for 
and attained. Lessons must not only be studied but mas- 
tered. Paintings should not merely thrill but beget new 
purposes. Magazines are a waste if they only entertain; 

they must heap fuel upon the fires of achievement. And this 
mental exercise must be so earnest and unremitting that, 
like the soldier’s drill, it becomes far more than exercise ; 

it must become settled discipline. 

Safeguarding.—The mind must be protected. It must 
have not only food and exercise; it must be guarded against — 
poisonous, debilitating, and disintegrating forces. Books 
that waste the hours without conveying thought, that 
teach untruth, that subtly suggest unworthy ideals; songs, 
stories, pictures, poems, plays, pleasures, companionships 
that weaken the will or stimulate impure and unhealthful 
emotions; conversation or literature that occupies the 
mind with dilutions of commonplace thought or cheap 
wit—all these are to the mind what nonnutritious, 
unwholesome, and disease-infected food is to the body. 

Sound or unsound.—The healthy, well-stocked, thor- 
oughly disciplined mind is now ready for service and isa / 
potential source of unmeasured blessing to society. Its |) 
possibilities of moral and spiritual helpfulness are great. 
The undisciplined mind, on the other hand, is constantly 
inclined to run off into bootless excursions and harmful 
_ paths, to accept the counterfeit for the real, the poisonous 
for the wholesome. Worse still, it is the nature of the 
undisciplined mind to stagnate, dwarf, shrivel, to revert 
to the animal plane. It is a savage without the tools of 
civilization, a horse untamed to useful service, a desert 
plant unsafe for food, a garden overgrown with weeds. 

Our stewardship now becomes more clear: we owe to our 
own minds, to our fellow men, and to our Maker such at- 
tention to our mental welfare as will assure ample nour- 
ishment, exercise, and security. 


INTELLECTUAL POSSIBILITIES 


It is a worthy and dignified stewardship that we offer 
to God when we offer him the service of our thinking 


50 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


powers. We put at his disposal, for his kingdom’s wel- 
fare, that power which has built up the thought life of 
civilization, transformed a world wilderness into farms 
and cities, tamed and organized and revolutionized society, 
and stocked the world with such philosophies, inventions, 
and discoveries as have provided unnumbered luxuries 
for men of every land. This well-developed, thoroughly 
disciplined intellect of man, guided by the Spirit of God 
and concentrated upon the problems of his Kingdom, is 
a power so resistless that in time it promises to make the 
world wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose and to © 
hasten the hour when “every knee [shall] bow, . . . and 
. . . every tongue . . . confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
to the glory:of God the Father.” 


THe MINISTRY OF HMOTION 


Noble impulses.— Equally inspiring are the possibilities 
of service through our emotional nature. All the wealth 
of all the patriotism of the past and of all the chivalry of 
noble men; all the romance of the centuries, with all the 
unmeasured treasure of domestic, parental, and filial love; — 
all the music and poetry, rhythm and oratory, painting, 
sculpture, architecture, and personal adornment; all are 
only a faint suggestion of the possibilities of a future in 
which the emotional life of all Christians shall be offered 
in stewardship to God. 

Lofty achievement.—Think of the opportunity for rey-— 
erent service which trained emotion offers, Tourists range 
the continents to catch glimpses of messages left on stone 
' and canvas by Michelangelo and Raphael, bowing in holy 
reverence at sight of “The Last Judgment,” “The Cruci- 

- fixion,” and the “Sistine Madonna.” Mozart, Beethoven, 
and Caruso will not cease to lift the hearts and purposes 
_ of men heavenward as long as the generations endure. 
London is the world’s capital not alone because of its 
hugeness and its finance but because Sir Christopher 
Wren lived there and wrought. The English-speaking 
world has just celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary 
of this great man’s death. Scarcely were the ashes cold } 
from the great London fire of 1666 when Sir Christopher © 


THE MENTAL LIFE 51 


hastened to the king with new plans for the rebuilding of © 
Saint Paul’s Cathedral. To-day he is known not only as 
the architect of that world famous temple but as the de- 
signer and builder of sixty-two of England’s most beauti-. 
ful and enduring structures—churches, hospitals, col- 
leges, observatories, theaters, government buildings, royal 
palaces. In responding to the impulse of the sublime he 
at the same time gave England her capital and lifted the 
hearts of generations skyward. 


THE UNCONQUERABLE WILL 


An irresistible force——If the stewardship of emotion is 
a sublime opportunity, that of the will is a still greater. 
The will is the master implement of human achievement. 
Its possibilities are unmeasured. The youthful Alexander, 
fired with ambitious purpose, marches out into unknown 
lands, conquers and assimilates whole nations, and refuses 
to stay his progress only when there are no worlds to 
conquer. Julius Cesar, in the hour of his great decision, 
crosses the Rubicon to become the master of the civilized 
world. Columbus upon an unknown sea, facing untried 
terrors, quelling the perilous uprising of mutinous sailors, 
pushes his hazardous way to the discovery of a new world. 
Napoleon, surrounded by swarming armies of enraged and 
vengeful foes, driven back to contend with inaccessible 
mountain barriers, cries out, “There shall be no Alps!” 
and plunges on to lay Europe at his feet. The “‘will to 
win,” though an invisible and intangible force, having no 
existence but in the mind of him who possesses it, is the 
greatest motive power in human civilization. 

Possibilities—Consider what may be accomplished by 
a disciplined will in the realms of discovery and inven- — 
tion. Recall the contributions to human welfare of Wash- 
ington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Edison, Marconi, Whitney, — 
Howe, Ford, Burbank. Then picture what may be 
wrought, in days to come, by men and women with wills 
trained to the service of men and consecrated to the per- 
manent extension of the kingdom of God in every corner 
of the world. 

Unconquerable.—The will is a talent susceptible of 


52 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


great expansion. It can be developed until it becomes, 
within the limits of reason, positively irresistible. The 
man who wills, can. There is no obstacle in the way of 
life preparation, of self-conquest, of endurance, of problem 
solution, of ultimate achievement, which he cannot over- 
come. The world lies an obedient slave at the feet of the 
man who wills. 

Perils.—Yet the will is equally susceptible to neglect 
and often becomes feeble, shrunken, flabby, diseased, and 
impotent. Neglect to use, develop, and strengthen the 
will soon leaves it paralyzed and atrophied. The world 
is full of men and women, young and old, who make no 
program for their lives, no plan for present and future 
activities, but merely drift with the tide, doing what is 
easy, accepting the thing that first comes to hand, “obey- 
ing that impulse,” tossed or tricked hither and thither by 
the kicks or seductions of those who do have wills and use 
them. In our language is a-humble and inelegant word, 
which we use in describing people of a certain sort—the 
word “shilly-shally.” Its etymology is most illuminating. 


It comes from a study of those persons who are always 


wavering and never able to come to a decision but are 
obliged to appeal to others to make up their minds for 
them. It is a mocking imitation of the helpless question 
“Shall I? Shall I?” 


“Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours to make them thine.” 


THE MiInp’s Love ror Gop 


A ripened emotion.—With well-trained intellect, will) 
and sensibility one’s love for men and for God is capable 


of vast increase; and as the mind develops, this love”de- 
velops correspondingly. The young Christian may indeed 
“love God with all his heart,” but the mature Christian 
should love God with a breadth and depth impossible to 
the new convert, because his heart has so expanded that 
its capacity to love has been infinitely increased. The love 
of the young disciple is a love of the emotions. He is 
filled with a sense of gratitude, of dependence, of wonder. 


ee 


THE MENTAL LIFE 53 


But if his spiritual growth is normal, he comes at length 
to the place where he realizes the meaning of the com- 
mandment “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy mind.” Such a love places at God’s disposal all 
one’s intellectual powers, all his gifts of sensibility, all the 
energies of his will. 
A regal affection. — Think af the mental machinery with | 
which Saint Paul was equipped to love Jesus! With a: 
highly trained intellect, a wide experience in study and 
travel, a deeply religious nature, a philosophic mind and 
boundless energies, compare his possibilities of love and 
service with those of the common, undeveloped man. 
Think how the prayerful Sir Isaac Newton, with profound 
insight into the secrets of the universe, must have loved 
God ; and the devout Michael Faraday, master of the mys- 
teries of chemistry; and Thomas Carlyle, with his Alpine 
intellect, as he wove into philosophic wisdom for us the 
story of his conversion; and Alfred Tennyson, whose long 
and radiant life was spent in weaving garlands of praise 
about the brow of Christ, in his Idylls of the King and 
In Memoriam; and Robert Browning, whose regal mind 
reveled in profound discourse upon the hidden mysteries. 
of God; and Augustine, seer and saint; and Kant, the 
world’s philosopher; and Brooks, the evangelist of the 
intellect; and Drummond, the reverent prophet of truth 
in nature; and Pasteur, apostle of biochemical science, 
whose life purpose is well expressed in a letter to his 
father: “God grant that by my persevering labors I may 
bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice 
of our knowledge of these deep mysteries of hfe and death, 
where all our intellects have so lamentably failed.” | 


INVESTMENT OF TALENT 


Rich dividends.— Many of God’s children, endowed with 
special gifts of mind and heart, have dedicated these gifts 
for the exclusive service of the Kingdom with exceptional 
results in blessing to men: Ira D. Sankey, whose rare 
endownment was that of sacred melody, will serve as an 
example; and Frances Ridley Havergal, with her pen 
dipped in the liquid gold of a glowing experience, and 


§4 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


the maxim of whose life seems to have been summed up 
in the message of her song: 


“Take my voice, and let me sing 
Ever, only, for my King”; 


and Fanny Crosby, the currents of whose talent for the 
production of popular song were turned entirely into the 
channels of religious expression, to the ultimate enrich- 
ment of all the hymnals of her generation; and Frances 
Willard, the only woman commemorated in the statuary 
of our national capitol, whese genius for leadership was 
unreservedly laid upon the altar for the whole world’s re- 
demption from the curse of alcohol. This ideal of the dedi- 
cation of one’s special talent to the exclusive service of 
religious expression may not be expected of all disciples, 


but these examples provide for us some intimation of 


what the finer talents of God’s best endowed sons and 
daughters will accomplish for the world when all are held 
in reverent stewardship for his kingdom. If many more 
superior talents were thus exclusively dedicated, there 
is no doubt that the interests of the Kingdom would be 
enormously advanced. 

Salvage enormous.—For any who have neglected these 
lofty privileges of talent consecration a word of encourage- 
ment may be given. Many a life of high promise is ship- 
wrecked early in its course, and still others midway of the 


voyage, from a dawning consciousness that life’s best tal- — 


ents have been slighted, and from the fear that all hope 
of high usefulness is lost. These may wisely recall the 


well-known legend of ancient Rome. In this story the 
Cumezan sibyl appeared to King Tarquin the Proud and ! 


offered him, at a great price, nine volumes of the myste- | 


rious Sibylline books. The king refused them, and the 
sibyl promptly burned three books, offering the remaining 
six at the same price. These were also refused. The 


sibyl burned three more volumes, and again offered the | 


remaining three at the same price. The king hastily pur- 
chased the remaining three, and these became the great 
future source of Rome’s guidance in affairs of state. To 
many lives there yet remain imperial opportunities on 


4 


! 


THE MENTAL LIFE 55 


condition of a speedy dedication of purpose and talent to 
the service of God and humanity. 


Tue EMPIRE OF PERSONALITY 


Monarch and realm.—The mind may thus be viewed as 

a vast empire, intrusted to us of God to subdue, organize, | 
develop, and administer through life. We are the mon- 
arch; our mind is our dominion. But, though ruler, we 
are not the owner; we are only the steward. As the 
earthly emperor must some day relax his grip upon his 
empire and turn it back to the sovereign people who in- 
trusted him with its governance, or hand it on to his suc- 
cessor, so we shall some day be called upon to yield up to 
the divine Owner this empire of personality with which he 
has so long intrusted us. We may hand back at last this 
empire despoiled, depleted, barren; or we may return it 
to him a great dominion, like Solomon’s ancient kingdom, 
so vast, rich, splendid, powerful, dominant, that the half 
cannot be told. 


For Stupy ANnp DIscussion 


1. Give some illustrations of man’s superiority. 

2. What books have most improved your mind? 

3. What are the mental gain and loss of movies? of 
stories? 

4. What are the relative advantages and disadvantages 
of college? of self-education ? 

5. What definite achievement do you think you could 
make in life if you should set your will to it? 

6. What talent could you dedicate to Kingdom service 
with greatest hope of success? 

%. Make a mental list of persons you know who have 
wasted their mental opportunities. 


For Reference and Study 


Rom. 1. 14. 
I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the 
wise and to the foolish. 


Rom. 12. 10-21. 

In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to an- 
other; in honor preferring one another; in diligence not 
slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in 
hope; patient in tribulation; continuing steadfastly in prayer; 
communicating to the necessities of the saints; given to hos- 
pitality. Bless them that persecute you; bless, and curse not. 
Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep. 
Be of the same mind one toward another. Set not your mind 
on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Be 
not wise in your own conceits. Render to no man evil for evil. 
Take thought for things honorable in the sight of all men. If 
it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all 
men. Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the 
wrath of God: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; 
I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, 
feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink: for in so doing thou 
shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of 
evil, but overcome evil with good. 


Luke 10. 29-37. . 

But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And 
who is my neighbor? Jesus made answer and said, A certain 
man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell 
among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and de- 
parted, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest 
was going down that way; and when he saw him, he passed 
by on the other side. And in like manner a Levite aiso, when 
he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other 
side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where 
he was: and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion, 
and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them 
oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought 
him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he 
took out two shillings, and gave them to the host, and said, 
Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, 
when I come back again, will repay thee. Which of these 
three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto him that fell 
among the robbers? And he said, He that showed mercy on 
him. And Jesus said unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. 


CHAPTER V 
SOCIAL RELATIONS 


HicH ORIGIN oF SocraL INSTINOTS 


From above.—The divine plan of life provides for man 
a social nature: “Be fruitful, and multiply.” “It is not 
good that the man should be alone.” “God setteth the soli- 
tary in families.” “There is a friend that sticketh closer 
than a brother.” “I have called you friends.” What a 
romance of domestic, fraternal, filial, patriotic, and divine 
devotion is the Bible! 

Universal The tendency for human beings to herd is 
inborn. The child longs for companionship, and the aged 
never outgrow the appetite. The presence of another life 
is sweet, even though, like the gloomy Carlyle and the taci- 
turn Tennyson, men sit together for the whole long even- 
ing silent before the fireplace. “Folks are better than 
stumps,” explained the poverty-stricken woman who re- 
fused to remain transplanted from the city’s slum to the 
promising opportunity of the newly cleared farm. Even 
the lower animals flock together in a friendly community 
life—the lambs, the bees, the birds, the cattle. All day 
long the dog follows his master, while horse and rider 
have been companions since the dawn of history. 

The urban instinct.—“God made the country, but man 
made the city” is only half truth, and therefore false. Man 
indeed made the city, and made very bad work of it; but 
he made it in magnetic response to God-given instincts. 
Not alone for convenience, amusement, or profit do men 
flock to the cities; but to see the faces and hear the voices 
and feel the presence of other lives. The goal of our civil- 
ization is the Christian city, and the ultimate home around 
which the prayers of saints have clustered for ages is 
visioned as the City of God. 


Propucts OF SoOcIETY 


Early environment.—The individual is a composite 
57 


58 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


product of past and present. Given the natural endow- 
ment bestowed upon him through heredity, his ultimate 
self is determined by the environment in which he moves. 
He is molded every hour by social contacts that provide 
for him the ruling motives and restraints of life. This 
molding begins in the cradle. Every moment of infancy 
is stimulated or controlled by others. Hncouragement, 
guidance, and repression form the program mapped out for 
him by nurses and guardians. He is a fettered captive 
in a prison of love; self-determination is reduced to its 
lowest terms; all of which guarantees his emanicipation 
from savagery. “Open your mouth,” “Shut your eyes,” 
“Drink this milk,” “Swallow the medicine,” “Don’t do — 
that,” “Mustn’t touch,” “Sit up straight,” “Hold still,” 
“Say, ‘Daddy,’?” “Don’t cry,” “Smile for auntie,” start 
the baby in the narrow way of conventional propriety. 

School life——The schoolroom takes up the task and adds 
its contribution—new ideas, inducements, penalties, prod- 
dings. The playground adds its incentives and discipline, 
more democratic and brutal, but effective. Sunday school 
and church provide still other influences. And then comes 
college, with novel surroundings, friendship, ideals, exam- 
ples, temptations, artificial barriers, classroom, dormitory, 
and campus ethics—new elements of stimulus and repres- 
sion. 

Occupation.—Occupational contacts add to the molding © 
and fixing of character—office, factory, farm, store, kit- 
chen, the things “you must do” and the things “you 
mustn’t do” hedging the life about. One cannot even 
use the sort of English he pleases and retain the approval 
of his fellows; he must use the English that conforms to 
established standards. One does not wear clothes of his 
own designing. He wears the clothes handed him from 
the past, modified to suit the whim of the current season, 
unless he is willing to risk the sly glances of his compan- 
ions. Dress, manners, language, must be adapted to the 
canons of city, country, seashore, mountain, office, golf 
links, church, dinner, opera. 

Custom.—Convention is the great autocrat of human 
society and imposes its penalties with an impartial hand. 


SOCIAL RELATIONS 59 


We may not too rashly trespass against the dignity of the 
saleslady, the bellboy, the porter, the policeman, the edi- 
tor, the judge, the preacher, or the social leader; which 
means that we are living in intimate relations with others 
and accept their influence upon our conduct and char- 
acter. They are molding us into other than we should 
have been without them. © 


OBLIGATIONS OF RECIPROCITY 


Debtors all_— The duty of rendering to the future a 
full equivalent for all we have received from the past now 
stands out in clearer light. Since society contributes so 
largely to our well-being, we are in constant debt to 
society and under obligations to render all possible service. 
Paul’s “I am a debtor . . . both to the wise and to the 
foolish” is no exaggeration of evangelistic enthusiasm 
but a sober and literal fact. Having received from all 
kinds of men, wise, unwise, ancient and modern, such dis- 
cipline as has made us fit for rational living, we are 
slackers to society and traitors to Providence unless we 
pass on to others all we have received, with interest well 
compounded. 

Seeking solvency.—Those who desire to be loyal to 
life’s duties must early recognize this responsibility and 
set about diligent preparation to discharge it. This will 
require a frank acknowledgment of our indebtedness to 
others and a settled purpose to serve them. Stewardship 
to society will prove to be a very pleasant stewardship, 
offering delightful’ surprises that will compensate for all 
sacrifices; but it requires sober, self-denying, and prayer- 
ful consideration. This settled purpose to benefit and 
uplift men is a most reliable evidence of worth-while 
Christian character. “He that loveth not his brother 
whom’ he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not 
seen.” “I have become all things to all men,” declares 
Saint Paul, “that I may by all means save some.” 


KNOWLEDGE OF Lire INDISPENSABLE 


Mingling with men.—Acquaintance with human life 
can come only through such personal contact with men as 


60 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


has for its motive something more than curiosity, pleas- 
ure, or material gain—a wholesome and benevolent inter- 
est in their welfare. We must learn how to mingle with 
men in such a way as constantly to impart to them some- 
thing worth while of ourselves and to draw forth from 
them some knowledge worth while to us. The most in- 
teresting textbook in the world is man. Human nature, 
rudimentary or refined, savage or civilized, sinning, sor- 
rowing, defeated, or victorious, is worthy the most pains- 
taking study of the disciple of truth. Let not this master 
textbook be overlooked. 

The greatest textbook—Human nature has been the 
constant textbook of those imperial characters who have 
best served their fellows and of those who have been most 
acceptable as leaders. The marvel of Shakespeare is his 
astounding knowledge of the human heart. Lincoln’s 
unrivaled place in history is traceable to his profound 
knowledge and love of men. ‘The secret of the popularity 
of Roosevelt was his frank democracy of mind and inter- 
est. He impersonated “the average American.” How 
sobering is the reflection that Jesus “knew what was in 
man”! When the unknown woman of Samaria had ex- 
changed a few sentences with him she hastened away with 
a transformed life, exclaiming, “He told me all things 
that ever I did.” The servant of Christ can well afford to 
cultivate an unfeigned interest in all the men and women 
and children of his age. | 


OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOCIAL STEWARDSHIP 


The home.—The field for social stewardship is large. 
Opportunities for its exercise are without limit. The 
stewardship of family relations is a most engaging study, 
and its practice indispensable to the well-being of society. 
When every father recognizes that parental obligation in- 
cludes the faithful stewardship of sons and daughters, we 
shall have a new conception of home. Susanna Wesley, 
giving personal attention to the physical welfare of her 
nineteen children, acting as schoolmistress and tutor to 
the entire family and giving stated personal and private 


SOCIAL RELATIONS 61 


religious instruction to each individual, indicates the rare 
possibilities of maternal stewardship. 

Kinship.—The picture in memory’s gallery of a grown- 
up sister, kneeling with her arm about her awkward 
country brother, on the Sunday afternoon before he left 
for college, asking God’s guidance, protection, inspiration, 
and deliverance in the new and untried life, tells the story 
of what stewardship may attempt within the family cir- 
cle. And the possibilities are limitless. “Father,” 
“mother,” all the sacred names of home, are words heavy 
with the freightage of suggested usefulness and blessing. 
Among the treasured memories of one life are the quiet 
prayers, the perennial interest in boys, and the sage but 
companionable advice of an aged grandmother well beyond 
the “years of usefulness.” 

Domestic service.—The relationship of servant and 
master abounds in opportunity. Lord Ashley, the sev- 
enth Earl of Shaftesbury, tells us that the most uplifting 
influence upon his early life was exerted by Maria Millis, 
a humble servant girl in his father’s house. “Uncle Tom,” 
the faithful slave, is not so much a character in fiction 
as a representative of thousands of loyal servants who 
have actually made the spiritual welfare of those whom 
they served the ruling maxim of their lives. And many 
a master or mistress has reciprocated with the same ear- 
nest devotion to the highest welfare of those who served 
them. Every soul intrusted to our family circle or our 
friendship circle becomes to us a stewardship to God. 


THE CHURCH’S VANTAGE PoINT 


Social opportunity.—The chief contact of the church is 
social. Cultivation of the spiritual could conceivably be 
carried on in private, but only in the environment of men 
of like nature with ourselves can we find full stimulus 
for the fulfillment of the second great commandment. A 
consciousness of the moral democracy of life, which one 
receives as he touches other men in church fellowship, and 
in which he notes the similarity that their struggles, 
doubts, temptations, and aspirations bear to his own, not 


62 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


only strengthens his own religious character but suggests 
new ways of effectually ministering to the welfare of 
others. . 

Educational. The immeasurable benefit imparted in 
the ordinary routine of the church is beyond compute. 
Only a deliberate mental inventory of these weekly con- 
tributions to human welfare can make their full realiza- 
tion possible. In a church once served by the writer as 
pastor was a highly intelligent and prosperous manufac- 
turer. This man was infallibly in his seat at the opening 
of every Sunday service. He was also invariably at his 
place in the midweek service. “What explains the fact, 
Brother ,”? asked the pastor one day, “that you 
are always in ‘your place at church?” “I cannot afford to 
be absent,” he replied. “When I was a little boy I came 
over from England with my widowed mother in the steer- 
age. We were very poor. More than once have I cried 
for bread when my mother had none to give me. I went 
to work when but a child. I received almost no schooling. 
What I have learned I have picked up as I came along. 
But my mother took me to church, and I have always 
attended. Twenty years ago I came to this city. I joined 
the church at once, and this church has been a source of 
perennial blessing to me. In that time, you know, Doctor 
Washburn has been our pastor, and Doctor Wolfe, and 
Doctor Sheridan, and Doctor Allen; and now you are here, 
and,” he continued with glowing emphasis, “in those 
twenty years I have heard discussed in this pulpit, from 
educated men, every important subject that interests hu- 
man life—science, history, sociology, ethics, politics, reli- 
gion. ‘To-day I am a fairly well-informed man and I owe 
it all to the church.” 


OccUPATIONAL OPPORTUNITY 


Religion in action.—Daily toil provides large advantage 
for social stewardship—the factory operative, his shop- 
mate and his boss; the salesman, customer, and employer; 
the office clerk and his executive; conductors, guards, pas- 
sengers, “fellow sufferers” all in a brief and enforced de- 
mocracy. So also the schoolroom, the college hall, the 








SOCIAL RELATIONS 63 


playground, the campus, the fraternity, the social gath- 
ering. 

Noblesse oblige—The most strategic opportunity in 
modern life for the exhibition and practice of this phase 
of stewardship is doubtless given in the relations which 
exist between employers of labor and the men and women 
who toil under their direction. The growth of modern 
industry has been so rapid and so enormous that, almost 
unawares, the spirit of neighborly helpfulness and coop- 
eration has vanished, giving place to vast mechanical sys- 
tems of quantity production. In the development of these 
systems, not unnaturally, the insistent requirements of 
speed, efficiency, and competition have thrust aside and 
submerged the natural instinct for neighborly helpfulness, 
opened a great chasm of estrangement between employer 
and employee, vastly enriched the former, socially segre- 
gated the latter, and thrown completely out of balance the 
established customs of generations and the social standards 
of the gospel. This chasm it is the function of the Chris- 
tian stewardship ideal to bridge, this estrangement to 
overcome, this balance to restore. That conditions of mis- 
understanding, inequality, and distrust have developed is 
not strange, but their long continuance unchallenged 
would be monstrous. Already encouraging signs of new 
and neighborly standards in business and industry 
are visible and multiplying. George Cadbury,! of Cad- 
bury Brothers, Ltd., Birmingham, England, has made 
notable contribution to experimentation in this field, in 
his relations with the workmen of his company, and in his 
establishment of the “Bourneville Model Village.” Of 
similar import are the patient endeavors of B. See- 
bohm Rowntree, a Quaker cocoa manufacturer of York, 
England, whose recent volume The Human Factor im 
Business, as well as other writings of like nature, dis- 
closes his own high standards of neighborly relationship 
to his employees and well illustrates the tendencies of 
Sent osctes weet ent sitet Vin ba see 
clear, and motives are often mixed. These instances are cited as illustrative of 


the noble endeavors of men and of the progress thus far made, and are offered 
for what they may be worth. 


64 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


Christian idealism in industry. Still fresh in memory 
are the unique utterances, standards, and endeavors at 
genuine Christian neighborliness in industry, society, and 
politics of the late mayor of Toledo—Samuel M. Jones 
(“Golden Rule Jones”)—who built up a thriving industry, 
as well as an invincible political following, on the literal 
application of the Golden Rule; who daily visited the- 
prisons and the sick, gave away all his salary as mayor, 
established playgrounds for the children, and in numer- 
ous ways exhibited the gospel spirit of “good will to men.” 

Their name is legion.—Arthur Nash, of Cincinnati, 
has made “the Golden Rule in business” a household 
word. This “rule” is made the basic principle in the 
organization and management of his factory, which has 
rapidly grown from a small institution, with a capital 
of $60,000, to a vast establishment, with a capital of 
$1,000,000, half of which is owned by the workers, whose 
share in the management and profits is a living illustra- 
tion of the principles of genuine Christian brotherhood. 
For twenty-six years the Henry A. Dix & Sons Com- 
pany, manufacturers of dresses and nurses’ uniforms, have 
sought to put into daily execution the principles of Chris- 
tian stewardship in industry. About four years ago the 
plan of a five-day week, without decrease in wages, was 
put into operation. Work and wages continued uninter- 
rupted in slack seasons, while in rush periods no more 
contracts were accepted than could be fulfilled without — 
overtime employment. Wages were always equal to those 
paid by competitors, while profits running from ten to 
thirty-seven per cent of the weekly wages were paid in 
the form of a cash bonus. About two years ago, in accord- 
ance with an easy and generous arrangement, which 
amounted practically to a gift, this factory was trans- 
ferred by Mr. Dix and his son to a company composed of 
employees, into whose hands the entire management now 
falls, together with all profits accruing from the business. 
One year from the date of transfer the new company man- 
agement was found to be self-reliant and in perfect con- 
trol, with a ten-per-cent increase for the year in quantity 
and turnover. More or less meritorious approaches to- 


SOCIAL RELATIONS 65 


ward such embodiment of Christian stewardship in busi- 
ness and industry have been made by such concerns as the 
Dutchess Bleachery, Wappinger’s Falls, New York; 
William Filene’s Sons, Boston; James McCreery & Com- 
pany, New York; the Procter & Gamble Company, Cin- 
cinnati; the International Harvester Company, Chicago; 
Hart, Schaffner & Marx, Chicago; the Columbia Conserve 
Company, Indianapolis; and, notably, the Dennison Man- 
ufacturing Company, Framingham, Massachusetts.? 

Winning a life.—All these contacts, with all their 
variety, offer at times strategic opportunity for a particu- 
lar form of stewardship to men—that of lifting them to 
a higher plane of Christian experience and holy living. 
Dwight L. Moody, sitting beside a stranger in a crowded 
car, drawing him into conversation, tactfully pointing him 
to the goodness of God and the blessings of the Chris- 
tian life, bowing with him for a moment in unobserved 
prayer, and leaving him a newborn convert to the truth 
as he dropped off at the next station, is a hint of the stew- 
ardship open to hundreds of men who had never consid- 
ered its possibility. 


CHANNELS OF PERSONAL INFLUENCE 


_ The tongue.—The words we use in our everyday inter- 
course provide possibilities of which we scarcely dream. 
The story of AXsop, who, ordered by his master Xanthus 
to prepare a feast of the best things in the world, served 
@ dinner of tongues; and who, rebuked for this and or- 
dered to prepare a feast of the worst things, again served 
a dinner of tongues, vividly illustrates the wholesome and 
the baleful influence of speech. 


“A word fitly spoken 
Is like apples of gold in baskets of silver.” 


“By thy words,” taught the Master, “thou shalt be 
justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” 





1 Interesting details touching many of the experiments mentioned above may 
be obtained from the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 105 East 
Twenty-second Street, New York City; the Methodist Federation for Social Service, 
150 Avenue, New York City; and the social-service departments of various 
other denominations. 


66 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


How quickly do new words and peculiarities of dialect 
attract young children and adhere to their speech! And 
how startlingly potent in their influence are words of ir- 
reverence, rudeness, vulgarity, and impurity, as well as 
words of reverence, respect, and refinement, discovered 
to be as we observe the changing characters in those about 
us! 

The temper.—Traits of disposition and exhibitions of 
temper are powerful for good and ill. Parents and teach- 
ers have often suffered in their own experience the merited 
rebuke administered by the insolent echo that so basely 
insulted the young Agassiz in his rambles. The appalling 
disrespect, impatience, and indolence of thousands of 
children are only the unconscious mirror of their elders. 

Courtesy.—Courtesy and considerateness are powerful 
levers for social ministration. Even hard-fisted business, 
mindful only of profits and dividends, has learned the fu- 
tility of “The public be damned,” and the wisdom of 
“The public be pleased.” The modern merchandising 


maxim that “the customer is always right” is at best — 


only half true, but it is so akin to the truth that every 
man deserves a square deal that it has ministered amaz- 
ingly to the advantage and comfort of both seller and 
buyer. “A soft answer turneth away wrath” is as true 
as in the days of Solomon. 


Adornment.—Even in dress and deportment is there a | 


stewardship of social ministry. Our forefathers looked 
with profound disapprobation upon “gold and pearls and 
costly array.” Quite possibly they were wise for the age 
in which they lived. And quite as truly is it possible 
that we are living in an age in which the duty to abjure 
all effort at personal attractiveness is superseded by the 
duty to study how to make this natural desire to please 
an opportunity for the administration of a wise steward- 
ship of influence over others. 


CoMPOUND INTEREST 


Magnetic life-——Human conduct under all sorts of nor- 
mal and abnormal conditions is inextricably interwoven 
with possibilities of stewardship for other lives—conduct 


SOCIAL RELATIONS 67 


under constraint, under temptation; attitude toward su- 
peviors, inferiors, friends, enemies; spirit and conduct 
toward the church, the Bible, prayer, the things that 
others reverence. Conversions are as often made by ex- 
ample as otherwise. Witness the strange inftmence of the 
saintly Livingstone over the agnostic Stanley and the 
turning of the latter to Christ. 

Jesus in society——What an inviting field for reverent 
study is offered by the social relationships of Jesus! If 
we could only picture to ourselves and trace the streams 
that must have flown from the boyhood home of the Mas- 
ter, from his contact with the laboring men who came to 
Joseph’s carpenter shop, from his village life in Nazareth 
and his mature years in Capernaum, from his visits to the 
homes which entertained him on his journeys, from his 
gracious contact with the family in Bethany, and from 
all the other relationships that in one short life he estab- 
lished with unknown multitudes, we should have inspira- 
tion and restraint for all the tests of social intercourse. 

Cumulative—The weight of our responsibility as stew- 
ards of God in social contact is indeed great, even in the 
present; but when that responsibility is multiplied by the 
far-reaching future, its gravity is increased in infinite pro- 
portion. If what we say and how we look and the deeds 
we do exert so great influence upon our contemporaries; 
and if the church, even in its present unperfeeted charac- 
ter, involves such weighty issues, how great will be the 
results, for good or ill, when multiplied by generations 
yet to come! 


For Stupy AND DIsovUssIONn 


1. What is the best influence your early home contrib- 
uted to your life? the school? the Sunday school? the 
church? ; 

2. In what ways could you learn more from your fel- 
low men than you are now learning? 

3. In what ways could you fulfill a larger social stew- 
ardship ? 

4, What is the best example of personal evangelism you 
know? 


For Reference and Study 


Psa. 84, 1-4, 10-12. 
How amiable are thy tabernacles, 
QO Jehovah of hosts! 
My soul longeth, yes, even fainteth for the courts of Jehovah; 
My heart and my flesh cry out unto the living God. 
Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, 
And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her 
young, 
Even thine altars, O Jehovah of hosts, 
My King, and my God. 
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: 
They will be still praising thee. 


Wor a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. 

{ had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, 

Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. 

For Jehovah God is a sun and a shield: 

Jehovah will give grace and glory; 

No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. 
O Jehovah of hosts, 

Blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. 


Psa. 119. 9-16. 
Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way? 
By taking heed thereto, according to thy word. 
With my whole heart have I sought thee: 
Oh let me not wander from thy commandments. 
Thy word have I laid up in my heart, 
That I might not sin against thee. 
Blessed art thou, O Jehovah: 
Teach me thy statutes. 
With my lips have I declared 
All the ordinances of thy mouth. 
I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, 
As much as in all riches. 
I will meditate on thy precepts, 
And have respect unto thy ways. 
I will delight myself in thy statutes: 
{ will not forget thy word. 





CHAPTER VI 
DEVOTION 


SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION 


Means of grace.—There is a fine cluster of spiritual 
resources, well known and universally commended among 
Christian people, whose enlarged meaning and worth 
through stewardship call for special attention at this 
point. These resources, commonly spoken of as “means 
of grace,” include prayer, reading and study of the Bible, 
Christian testimony, attendance upon services of the 
church, giving to the poor. They are ordinarily regarded 
as imposing duties and obligations and are conveyed to our 
consciences in the imperative mood: “Men ought always 
to pray.” “Search the Scriptures.” “Ye are witnesses,” 
therefore testify. “Forsake not the assembling of your- 
selves together.” “Remember the poor.” Sometimes, in 
moments of spiritual exaltation, and with growth in reli- 
gious perception, the disciple is enabled to grasp a larger 
meaning and to realize that these “means of grace” are 
not only duties but privileges. Solemn injunction then 
gives place to affectionate invitation, prayer ceases to be 
an irksome “must” and becomes a gladsome “may,” and 
Scripture reading, alms, and testimony become bright 
spots in personal experience: “Come unto me, and I will 
give you rest.” “How sweet are thy words unto my 
taste!” “We cannot but speak the things which we have 
seen and heard.” 


“T was glad when they said unto me, 
Let us go unto the house of Jehovah.” 


“Tt is more blessed to give than to receive.” 


THE SHIELD oF GoLD 


As duty and privilege.—That both these aspects of prac- 
tical Christian activity are real is as evident in religious 


69 


70 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


experience as in the Scriptures. Prayer, church attend- 
ance, charity, are manifestly both duty and privilege. To 
make these activities mere electives in the program of 
Christian training is to ignore the normal tendencies of 
human nature and to withhold its indispensable discipline ; 
to present them solely as obligations is to invite the peril 
of spiritless conformity and to rob the religious life of 
the wholesome human stimulus of self-interest. 

An opportunity.—In the light of Christian stewardship, 
however, these common means of grace are discovered to 
occupy a still loftier plane and are assigned a still higher 
function in the program of noble living. Prayer, the 
Bible, the church, not only prescribe personal duties and 
offer pleasant privileges but present the obligations and 
opportunities of stewardship. Prayer becomes a finely 
wrought instrument, placed by the divine and wise Master 
in the hands of his trusted steward, not to burden him, 
not to ease him, but as an efficient implement for getting 
God’s work done more speedily and completely. The pur- 
pose of the church is not primarily to torture men one 
day in seven, nor yet to provide them with a snug harbor 
well sheltered from the storms which sweep over luckless 
sinners’ heads, but to give to honest-hearted disciples 
such a resource as will enable them to answer the 
Christian’s universal prayer: “Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth.” So to 
the Christian knight whose eyes are opened to look upon 
the God-and-neighbor side of holy service, instead of the 
self side, the shield of burnished silver becomes a shield 
of flaming gold. Thus it is seen that the religious life, 
with all its implications and with all our spiritual con- 
tacts, is intrusted to us as a sacred stewardship, for every 
feature of which we must account to God. 


A NorMaAt APPETITE 


Prayer natural.—Prayer is discovered by the healthy 
Christian to be one of the most priceless privileges of his 
life. It is as natural as the cry of the child for its mother, 
as the opening of the unfledged robin’s beak for food. 
The first impulse of the new disciple is to pray. “Be- 


DEVOTION | 71 


hold, he prayeth” was the convincing evidence offered to 
the saintly Ananias: that Saul of Tarsus had been con- 
verted. And no less characteristic of the normal disciple 
was the theme of that prayer “What shall I do, Lord ?” 

Precious.—T'o come before the mercy seat, to realize 
the privilege of personal communion with the Father, to 
“think God’s thoughts after him,” to pour out before him 
all our wants, to confess our shame and guilt and all our 
sins and transgressions, to plead for forgiveness, to lay 
our unbearable burdens upon his unwearied strength, to 
unfold before him the baffling problems that confront us, 
to confide in him our ambitions and our secret personal 
desires, to tell him of our love and to pour out before 
his throne the gratitude of our hearts for all his mercies 
—all this it is which makes prayer forever the sacred 
privilege of the Christian, which keeps it fresh and vital 
through the passing centuries, and which binds us and 
all that is most dear to us “with gold chains about the 
feet of God.” 


Limirtess ENERGY 


Potent.—But there is one aspect of prayer which seems 
in our own age—perhaps in all ages—to have been almost 
_ wholly overlooked, and that is prayer as power. And this 
aspect of prayer it is which Jesus seems especially to have 
taught his disciples. They knew, as well as we, all the 
other functions of prayer. They should have known this 
one also, for did they not have the example of Abraham, 
and Elijah, and Moses, and Hezekiah, and all the heroes 
of the Old Testament? But they had forgotten or could 
not grasp it, just as we have forgotten or cannot grasp. 
Jesus came into the world to teach men how to do the 
impossible! For until men can do the impossible, the 
tide of life can never rise above the self plane where 
“Nature, red in tooth and claw,” has for her great maxim 
of progress “the survival of the fittest.” But Jesus 
breaks in sunder the iron bars of despair and bids de- 
feated men hope. “If two of you shall agree . . . it shall 
be done.” 

Triumphant.—Herein is power: two men, working with 


72 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


God, in God’s way, can do the morally needful but hope- 
less, impossible thing! Better still: where even two “right- 
eous men” cannot be found to face the need, one alone 
can prevail to do it; “for every one that asketh receiveth.” 
So the pages of the world’s religious history, the records of 
the great reform movements, the stories of evangelistic 
triumph, the annals of missionary heroism, daring and 
adventure, are full of the romantic accounts of Hima- 
layas of difficulty overthrown by prayer. Paul, and Lu- 
ther, and Asbury, and Moody, and Taylor, and Martyn, 
and Carey, and Livingstone, and Paton, and Wilberforce, 
and a hundred other apostolic names remind even the cas- 
ual reader of Christian history of the incomprehensible 
triumphs of prayer. 


INTERCESSION 


Responsible—The power of prayer is a most sobering 
responsibility. It is a stewardship for which we must 
render a strict account. We may not handle lightly this 
grave trust, as innocent children handle sharp-edged tools, 
or careless workmen high explosives. If we are privileged 
to labor together with God to achieve moral miracles we 
must be sure that the work we attempt is not only worth 
while but the most truly worth-while of anything within 
our reach. Nothing of a selfish nature, nothing frivolous 
or insignificant, nothing tainted with sin or compounded 
with evil, may claim a nght to any place in the Christian’s 
program of prayer. 

Altruistic—For what, then, may we pray? Or, rather, 
what is the highest and noblest function of prayer? IJn- 
tercession! Jesus’ prayers were for others. Prayer for 
self is legitimate, normal, inevitable, indispensable; but 
prayer for others is productive, creative, divine. 


“For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?” 


“Had I a fulcrum on which to place my lever,” Archime- 
des, the philosopher, is said to have declared, “I could lift 


DEVOTION 73 


the world!” To the Christian has been given this ful- 
crum—the immutable promises of God—and with it also 
the lever of intercessory prayer, which, if we will, we may 
thrust underneath a sinking, suffering, sordid, dying 
world, and lift it upward toward God. 

Imperative.—For to the Christian disciple is given the 
duty not only to pray, and to pray for worth-while objects, 
to pray for fellow men, but to prevail in prayer. “Ren- 
der an account of thy stewardship” is as applicable to 
prayer as to momey or time. What have you done with 
the power of prayer? It was given you as spiritual capital, 
with which to achieve, to produce, to create. Where is 
your talent? What have you wrought with it? 


Tur Boox 


There has been placed in the hands of Christian men a 
remarkable volume. It is the unique and most compre- 
hensive library on human history, ethical standards, moral 
precepts, and poetic imagery the world contains. Its chief 
distinction, however, is in the realm of religion, which 
is its preeminent theme. In that realm no other litera- 
ture is comparable. This library of sacred books we call 
the Bible. 

Capital—In this connection, however, we are not think- 
ing of the Bible particularly as literature, as a book of rev- 
elation, or as a guide in spiritual affairs, but as a creative 
force, placed in our hands for helpful moral achievement. 
We are thinking of ourselves as stewards, intrusted with 
the Bible as working capital, which we must invest in 
the wisest way, and on which we are to produce spir- 
itual profits for our Master. How may we make the best 
investment of this opportunity? 

Open minds.—By making the fullest possible acquaint- 
ance with its true meaning and content. By such an 
understanding of it as will yield personal enrichment of 
mind and character. The Bible should thus be read with 
open mind, as nearly as may be without prepossession or 
prejudice, ready constantly for “new light to break forth,” 
eager for fresh revelation to come through its pages from 
the “spirit of truth.” With this attitude of moral and 


Wd STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


spiritual receptiveness the scientific method may wisely 
and safely be applied to the study of the Word; for this 
attitude of mind precludes indifference and moral antag- 
onism and constantly deepens respect, reverence, and heart 
preparation for whatever truths the Book may seem to 
disclose. 


A MoprrRn INCARNATION 


Hidden treasure.—This study of the Bible should be 
regular and constant, that its truths may saturate the 
atmosphere of daily life. It should also be diligent and 
observant, that hitherto-undiscovered treasures may be 
brought to ight; for it is not too ambitious a hope for any 
faithful disciple to cherish that he may unearth from this 
limitless volume some fresh atom of inspiration which may 
bless his neighbor or the world in time of need. There 
are always hidden depths of inexhaustible truth. Mines 
of gold and of copper, worked in years gone by with cruder _ 
implements and imperfect knowledge, and abandoned long 
ago as exhausted and without further value, have in recent 
years been reopened and, with modern tools and equip- 
ment, directed by wider knowledge and greater resources 
of power, been compelled to yield treasures of metallic 
wealth far surpassing anything produced or even dreamed ~ 
of by a former generation. | 

Incarnate.—The enrichment of mind and character 
thus secured must now be made available for the help of 
other men. The word of life, hidden in the heart, must 
be in readiness to offer to hungry neighbors, starving for 
truth; noble character, begotten by uninterrupted contact 
with high ideals, must "be an ever-present inspiration to all 
who behold. “Sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,” 
to men and women famishing for truth and love, are words 
of Christian helpfulness; and who shall say what miracles 
of deliverance have been wrought among men by those 
who have walked abroad with the helpful Christ incar- 
nate in their lives? If we are to credit the testimony of 
faithful missionaries—and reason all but precludes any 
other explanation—it is this incarnation of Christ in 
humble, pagan peasants and outcastes which accounts for 





DEVOTION % 


the marvelous spread of Christianity in Korea and the 
development of the mass movement in India. 


SANCTIFIED TONGUES 


The might of testimony.—The most interesting and 
convincing method of transmitting religious truth and 
of winning men to its acceptance is Christian testimony. 
The reason is not far to seek. Testimony is personal. It 
passes from eager speaker to eager listener. It adapts 
itself to the individual and to the particular phase of 
thought under consideration. It is social, magnetic. It 
was Christian testimony, the story of Jesus’ wonderful 
achievements blazoned abroad, the teachings of the apostles 
carried from mouth to mouth, which made possible the 
planting of the church. “Never man spake like this man,” 
the Pharisees’ committee reported, and “great was the 
company of women that spread abroad the message.” 'Tes- 
timony has likewise been a most powerful agency in the 
establishment of practically every Protestant communion, 
in the building up of the Salvation Army, in the spread 
of Christian Science—in fact, in the promotion of every 
form of religious organization. Without its assistance 
foreign-mission advance would be practically hopeless. 

A Bible mode.—This phase of Christian stewardship is 
the object of special scriptural emphasis. The “watch- 
man upon the tower” is held to a strict accountability for 
the warning he gives or withholds. “Go and tell John 
the things which ye have seen and heard,” commanded 
Jesus. “Go home to thine house and declare,” he urged 
upon the healed demoniac. “Go ye into all the world, 
and preach my gospel to the whole creation,” was his 
final and crowning commission to his chosen apostles. 

Powerful.—This stewardship we must not neglect. It 
may indeed be rendered as a mere formality, without 
heart or forcefulness; but, where wisely and discreetly 
offered, charged with earnestness and sincerity, whether 
in public service, or as friend to friend or stranger to 
stranger, with wise adaptation to the age in which we live 
and to the object to be attained, this form of stewardship 
is unexcelled in possibilities of fruitfulness. 


76 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


A beacon light.—Considered from the angle of Chris- 
tian stewardship, Jesus’ word to his disciples “Ye are the 
light of the world” takes on serious proportions. It may 
mean to each one of us an important mission fulfilled or a 
priceless opportunity neglected. If the Statue of Liberty, 
lifting its glowing torch over the waters of New York 
harbor, ceaselessly preaches its gospel of freedom to the 
world’s incoming pilgrims, much more does the faithful 
and loving testimony of living witnesses send forth the 
message of God’s restoring grace to cheer the heavy hearts 
of countless pilgrims of the night. 


A New Morive 


Why the church ?—The claims of the church have been 
pressed upon men from various standpoints, and equally 
varied have been the motives that have led men into its 
fellowship. Perhaps all might be summed up in two 
quite divergent views of the church: first, as a harbor of 
refuge, a place of security, an invitation which may not 
safely be rejected; secondly, a field of service, an oppor- 
tunity for useful exertion. The church needs me, or I 
need the church. 

An instrument.—There is something to be said for each 
of these motives. Doubtless both are valid. But in the 
light of Jesus’ standards of discipleship we find a third 
motive, hitherto largely overlooked, yet one which em- 
braces and combines all other motives into a harmonious 
and larger whole—the motive of stewardship. In other 
words, the church is not designed primarily to serve me nor 
primarily for me to serve; it is put into my hands as a 
most convenient and practical device for serving Christ 
and, with him, my fellow men. My obligation and rela- 
tion to the church, then, are determined by the fact and 
measure of my ability to deliver to my Master larger 
dividends of usefulness and devotion. 

High efficiency.—There is no small privilege involved in 
this. I am the recipient of an honor I cannot well 
ignore. The church is indeed human but it is more: it is 
divine in its friendships and associations, it is composed 
of the people of God, it is redeemed through the sacrifice 


DEVOTION rau 


of his Son; it has been the guardian of the Scriptures and 
the conservator of Christian history; the organ of spirit- 
ual fellowship and the channel of spiritual power; it has 
nurtured the individual disciple, sanctified the home, re- 
proved the evils of its day, championed the great moral 
reforms, leavened society, and sets as its ultimate goal the 
redemption of the world. Being earthly, it is fallible 
and faulty; but, being also more than earthly, it is stead- 
fastly approaching the high ideal of its divine and perfect 
Founder. And it is this fine and sacred instrument which 
Providence has intrusted to my hands for the fulfillment 
of my stewardship to men and God. 


For Stupy AND DIscussIon 


1. Make a list of the great prayers of the Bible. Point 
out the chief motive in each. 

2. Illustrate prayer as a stewardship. 

3. Write a brief sketch of prayer in Christian history. 

4, Is there a stewardship of good books? Illustrate. 

5. How could you more effectively discharge your stew- 
ardship of the Bible? 

6. What is the most convincing example of Christian 
_ testimony known to you? 

7. What better use can you make of the church than 
you have done? 


For Reference and Study 


Deut. 8. 18. 
But thou shalt remember Jehovah thy God, for it is he that 
giveth thee power to get wealth. 


Psa. 44. 1-3. 
We have heard with our ears, O God, 
Our fathers have told us, 
What work thou didst in their days, 
In the days of old. 
Thou didst drive out the nations with thy hand; 
But them thou didst plant: 
Thou didst afflict the peoples; 
But them thou didst spread abroad. 
For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, 
Neither did their own arm save them; 
But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy 
countenance. 


1 Tim. 4. 4, 5. 
For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be 
rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified 
through the word of God and prayer. 


Luke 12. 13-21. 

And one out of the multitude said unto him, Teacher, bid 
my brother divide the inheritance with me. But he said unto 
him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? And 
he said unto them, Take heed, and Keep yourselves from all 
covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things which he possesseth. And he spake a parable 
unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought 
forth plentifully: and he reasoned within himself, saying, What 
shall I do, because I have not where to bestow my fruits? And 
he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build 
greater; and there will I bestow all my grain and my goods. 
And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid 
up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But 
God said unto him, Thou foolish one, this night is thy soul 
required of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, 
whose shall they be? So is he that layeth up treasure for 
himself, and is not rich toward God. 


Acts 4. 32-35. 

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart 
and soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things 
which he possessed was his own; but they had all things 
common. And with great power gave the apostles their wit- 
ness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace 
was upon them all. For neither was there among them any 
that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or 
houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that 
were sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet: and distribution 
was made unto each, according as any one had need. 


CHAPTER VII 
POSSESSIONS 


THe Dignity or MoNnEry 


Varied functions.—Money is a thing of far greater im- 
portance than any of us will ever be able to realize. And 
. money to-day means more than it ever meant before in 
the history of the world. Not only is it the same conven- 
ient medium of exchange that it has always been, eman- 
cipating society from the primitive, awkward, and shack- 
ling necessity of barter and exchange: it is also a modern 
expression of the enormous power and possibilities of 
human achievement through physical, intellectual, and 
purposeful endeavor. In the great markets and financial 
centers of the world money serves as a highly refined 
and delicately adjusted instrument—sort of social seis- 
mograph—for recording the fluctuating harmonies and 
disturbances that occur in the material welfare and the 
political and social relations of human society. 

Enormous significance.—Unquestionably countless mil- 
lions of modern wealth are wasted, billions misused or mis- 
ppplied; but every giant skyscraper, every ocean leviathan, 
every motor car, aeroplane, radio station, locomotive, sus- 
pension bridge, tunnel, university, hospital, cathedral, is 
an incontrovertible material testimony to the essential im- 
portance of money to the welfare and progress of men. 
. Wisely or unwisely, too, money occupies a unique and 
highly important place in the plans, toil, and ambitions 
of men. ‘To very many it has become the standard 
measurement of success in life, the index of talent, the 
condition of domestic contentment, the goal of personal 
endeavor, and the proof of fitness for survival. When, 
therefore, we talk of the stewardship of money we are 
considering a theme of large dimensions. 


THe SAaNnotiry oF Monry 


Misunderstood.—But money is a sacred as well as an 
“9 


80 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


important institution. This is a fact which men have been 
slow to realize and which the majority still fail to appre- 
hend. We think of money as a sort of human necessity, a 
convenience it would be awkward to do without, a desir- 
able means of comfort and luxury; but to think of money 
as something essentially good, as having definite place in 
God’s original scheme of things, and as possessing the 
slightest right to be called sacred is probably as far from 
the average Christian man’s thought as the east is from 
the west. 

Sacred or secular.—This conception of money is due, in 
part, to a hasty and ill-considered interpretation of certain 
passages of Scripture. Jesus warns men of the perils of 
covetousness, of the danger that lurks in an undue love of . 
wealth and an unwarranted trust in material things. The 
apostles echo the same needed warning. Three New Testa- 
ment authors, in three different Epistles, caution their | | 
readers against the peril of “filthy lucre,” with which the | 
men of their day are polluting themselves. Thus, the ma- © 
jority of men in Christian communities grow up with a 
vague feeling that there is something essentially defiling 
about money; that, though good men must handle it and 
strive to accumulate it through the six working days of 
the week, it should be resolutely banished from their Sun- 
day thoughts, and certain mental and spiritual ablutions 
performed to rid the soul of its contamination. This false 
conception of money is further exaggerated by the per- 
sistent tendency to separate things into “sacred” and “‘se- 
cular,” as well as by the spread of such unfortunate 
epithets as “tainted money.” 


WHERE THE Tatnt INHERES 


| 
Nonmoral.—There is no tainted money. There may bel \, a 
thousands of tainted hands that presume to use money | | 
to which they have no right, or for unholy, unfraternal, ay j 





antisocial, or selfish purposes; but money itself is incap- 
able of possessing or retaining any moral quality whatso- 
ever. It is in itself absolutely colorless, but, like the 
fabled chameleon, displays the color of that with which it 
is associated. In the hands of evil men it is a powerful 


POSSESSIONS 81 


instrument of evil; in the hands of good men it acquires 
infinite possibilities of good. Money can be spoken of as 
“secular” only when used for secular purposes, “sacred” 
when put to sacred uses, and “tainted” and “filthy” in 
the hands of tainted and filthy men. 

Why men toil.—But this is only the negative side. oe 
the vast majority of its numberless contacts money is 
positive and far-reaching good. It is a measure of es 
fish human endeavor, of patient toil and sacrifice, of 
domestic devotion and family affection. Men commonly 
struggle for the possession of money not with the deliber- 
ate purpose of committing evil with it, but for the sake of 
some worth-while personal good or to feed their children, 
relieve their wives of undue burden, buy boots and books 
for their boys and girls, send their sons and daughters to 
college, give to their own flesh and blood an honored 
name and place in the world. The chief reason why we 
look with suspicion upon money is because we have never 
understood it. We need to make a new appraisal of it and 
to set it in its true relation to the program of life and to 
its potential influence on human character. 


THE SourcE oF WEALTH 


Bian and brawn.—For consider the origin of money. 


Where does it come from? It is the product of a great 


partnership. In the form of rich, abundant raw materialit | 


comes fresh from the hand of God—in sunshine, showers, 
billowy fields of grain, bending orchards, cattle upon 
a thousand hills, mines bursting with ore, seas sparkling 
with pearls, every conceivable bounty of nature. On this 
unlimited store of raw material the sweating brains of 
thinking men and the calloused hands of toiling men set 
to work. And the result is wealth. Money is thus a holy 
amalgam of the generosity of God and the toil of men. 
No particle of property ever originates elsewhere. The 
devil never produced a dollar; though he has perverted the 
use of many and destroyed still more. Only God and man, 
working together, have ever produc anything worthy to 
be dignified as wealth. 


? 


82 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


Coined energy.—“The modern world,” says a recent 
writer, “has loved money without respecting it. Money 
is a symbol of value, and value is created by the expendi- 
ture of the priceless stuff of life. A coin is so much 
minted life, a holy thing, not to be handled lightly or ir- 
reverently. It is a sacramental thing, like the bread and 
wine of the Communion, the outward and visible sign of 
life fruitfully expended. That is why a bank should be 
a temple, and the banker a priest—a man who handles 
holy things. The storekeeper’s merchandise is sacramental 
stuff, congealed life. His store should be a temple, and 
the man who sells shoddy goods defiles the temple as much 
as did the hucksters and money changers in the Temple 
in Jerusalem long ago. To the man in whom the King- 
dom has come the world and all that’s in it is sacra- 
mental.””1 

Perils.—Is there, then, no danger in wealth, and may 
we handle it lightly and with no fear for its reputed 
perils? On the contrary, we need to be doubly watchful 
jest we fall into temptation and poison or destroy our- 
selves with that which was intended for our use and hap- 
piness. ‘The more costly the machinery, the greater the 
consequence of misuse; the more valuable the possession, 
the greater the possibility of loss; the finer the human © 
relationship, the more unholy its perversion; the loftier — 
the talent, the more tragic its collapse. Since wealth is 
normally sacred, the danger of its abuse or mishandling 
is the more imminent. 

Potentialities—On the other hand, the sanctity of 
money vastly augments its potential blessedness. Since 
it is so valuable and so human and so sacred in its origin 
it commends itself as a still richer and nobler gift to — 
Christ and to the resources of his kingdom. Mary’s ala- 
baster box of ointment was precious not alone because of 
its intrinsic worth, but because its cost had been so great 
as seriously to tax her humble resources; for in her day 
“two hundred pence” was the price of a full year of the 
average workingman’s toil. 





1Riohard Roberts in The Uniried Door. 





POSSESSIONS 83 


STEWARDSHIP’S Primary CoNTACT 


Money fundamental.—lIt is perfectly natural, then, that 
in relation to our possessions stewardship should reach its 
simplest and most concrete form. In the finest moral 
sense we are God’s stewards in relation to our minds, our 
bodies, our friends, our prayers; but in every sense and in 
the most elementary and obvious way we are stewards of 
our money. This is registered in the fact that at the 
very mention of stewardship the religious consciousness 
immediately gravitates toward the stewardship of posses- 
sions. Whatever else Christian stewardship means, no 
one doubts that it means the stewardship of money. 

High adaptability—And this is natural. The one pos- 
session we have which passes current in every market, 
which we can with greatest facility trade, accumulate, in- 
crease, squander, convert to a variety of uses, is money. 
It is therefore most easily given to God, most readily 
adapted to his service. Not all can command their time, 
not all have health, some have no children to give; but 
in modern life all have some measure of material posses- 
sion through whose contribution they can express their 
_ devotion and acknowledge their obligation to God. 

Emasculated stewardship.—Thus, until the stewardship 
of money becomes a settled principle, and its practice a 
fixed habit of hfe, stewardship has no tangible content. 
Vague professions of the recognition of stewardship in 
all things, pious verbiage that claims to bind all one has 
upon the altar of sacrifice to God, while little or nothing 
is actually set apart and transferred to his possession and 
use, are empty vaporings and wordy generalizations, with- 
out moral depth or value, revealing their origin in intel- 
lectual ignorance or spiritual obtuseness. Though the 
stewardship of the entire life is far larger than (and fully 
embraces) the stewardship of possessions, stewardship is 
meaningless until it expresses itself in that which costs. 
Until the modern Christian is willing to curtail his own 
material resources for the sake of the service of his Master 
he is in no wise entitled to consider or profess himself a 
steward at all. 


84. STEWARDSHIP FOR ALU OF LIFE 


AN INFALLIBLE TEST 


Reliability—The acknowledgment of stewardship with 
respect to all of life, including possessions of every sort— 
time, talents, friends, spiritual resources—through the 
offering of substantial material gifts and sacrifices, thus 
becomes a reliable and standard test of Christian sincerity 
and of the character and genuineness of the steward. Un- 
less such offerings are frequent, steady, systematic, and 
proportioned to the giver’s ability and income, and of such 
a size and character as to constitute some measure of self- 
denial and sacrifice, doubt is at once thrown upon the 
stewardship quality of the transaction. A steward’s first 
consideration is the service of his master, the promotion 
of his master’s interests; and service involves exertion, 
self-effacement, devotion, sacrifice. 

Who decides?—That the proportion of the offering to 
the income should be left to the judgment or caprice of 
the steward is equally unthinkable if the essential signifi- 
cance of stewardship is to be conserved at all. The first 
consideration of stewardship is mutual agreement. The 
faithful steward could never once think of handling the 
capital involved, every farthing of which is provided by 
the Owner, and, in return, deliver to the Owner such 
dividends, if any, as might be entirely convenient to him- 
self. Only such regular proportion of the income as the 
Christian steward has full reason to believe to be in ac- 
cordance with the will of God, not what he himself hap- 
pens to be willing to offer, can for a moment be admitted 
to be an honest and fair fulfillment of stewardship obliga- 
tion. And what proportion of income will satisfy the 
claims of God upon his steward it is the duty of that 
steward diligently to endeavor to discover and, when 
discovered, to render. 


Ricu AttuviaAL DEposits 


Comprehensiveness.—Like a majestic river thus does 
Christian stewardship gather, from every side of life, 
breadth, depth, volume, momentum, richness, and pour 
its flood of treasure through the channel of material ac- 


| 
, 
; 





POSSESSIONS 85 


knowledgment, in the offering of such proportion as God 
seems to indicate, into the gracious storehouse of his king- 
dom. There is no part of the faithful steward’s life which 
this offering does not represent. 


MISTAKING A PART FOR THE WHOLE 


The other..nine.tenths.—Stewardship is far from ex- 
hausting itself in proportionate material contribution. Its 
province extends not only to the offered portion but to all 
one’s individual possessions. No agent in the business 
world could think of his stewardship to his employer as 
confined to his own wages, profits, or dividends. By the 
very terms of his relation to his employer, expressed or 
understood, he is steward of all the property he handles 
and of every other material interest of his employer over 
which he has any possible control. Thus the Christian 
steward is under the fullest obligations of obedience and 
service to God not only in the matter of the portion he 
offers for Christian benevolence but with respect to the 
portion he retains. As the interdenominational statement 
of stewardship principles? recently adopted by the United 
Stewardship Council declares: “Stewardship involves both 
_ the beneficent use of money and the spirit and method of 
its acquisition, investment, and expenditure.” 


For Strupy AND DIScUSssION 


1. What could be used instead of money in our present 
civilization ? 

2. Discuss wrong motives in money making. 

3. What purposes can you think of for which money can 
be used reverently ? 

4, Why does the mention of Christian stewardship 
always suggest money? 

5. How is money giving a test of sincerity in steward- 
BNI. P is. 

6. Has the steward a right to determine the proportion 
of his giving? 

%. Have you asked God’s guidance in the matter of 
tithing ? 

2See pages 13, 14. 


For Reference and Study 


Gen. 4. 3-5a. 

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought 
of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah. And Abel, 
-he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat 
thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his 
offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. 


Gen. 14. 18-20. 

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth pread and 
wine: and he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed 
him, and said, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor 
of heaven and earth: and blessed be God Most High, who hath 
delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him a 
tenth of all. 

Gen. 28. 16-22. 

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely 
Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was 
afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other 
than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And 
Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that 
he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and 
poured oil upon the top of it. And he called’ the name of 
that place Beth-el: but the name of the city was Luz at the 
first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with 
me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me 
bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to 
my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, then 
this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s 
house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the 
tenth unto thee. 

Lev. 27. 30. 

And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the 

land, or of the fruit of the tree, is Jehovah’s. 


Mal. 3. 7-12. 

From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from 
mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, 
and I will return unto you, saith Jehovah of hosts. But ye 
say, Wherein shail we return? Will a man rob God? yet ye 
rob me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes 
and offerings. Ye are cursed with the curse; for ye rob me, 
even this whole nation. Bring ye the whole tithe into the 
storehouse that there may be food in my house, and prove me 
now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the 
windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there 
shall not be room enough fo receive it. And I will rebuke 
the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the 
fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit 
before the time in the field, saith Jehovah of hosts. And all 
nations shall call you happy; for ye shall be a delightsome 
land, saith Jehovah of hosts. 


CHAPTER VIII 
HISTORICAL SOURCES 


EarRLty OUTCROPPINGS 


Ancient.—A consciousness of stewardship responsibility 
was born with the race. Its manifestations are as old as 
history. It parallels the first pages of the Old Testament. 
“Let us make man in our image, . . . and let them have 
dominion” proclaims the source and the scope of human 
accountability. “Therefore shall a man leave his father 
and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife” forges 
the first link in the stewardship of family relations, Our 
racial mother’s exultant cry, on the birth of her firstborn, 
“T have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah,” fore- 
shadows parental responsibility in all generations. With 
the bestowal of the garden, “to dress it and to keep it” and 
to enjoy, and with the reservation of the tree of knowledge, 
come widening aspects of stewardship. 

Elementary.—T'wo brothers, standing before an altar, 
each presenting the fruits of his industry, give us the 
first sweet picture of gratitude to Jehovah for his benefits 
and the first recorded acknowledgment of stewardship in 
material things. Cain’s sullen and astonished answer “Am 
I my brother’s keeper?” and Jehovah’s indignant reply 
“Thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” 
reveal to us how reluctant are human hearts to acknowl- 
edge a full and adequate stewardship in social relations— 
a stewardship whose rigorous demands God never for a 
moment relaxes. Yet, tempering these stern requirements, 
comes quickly a stewardship of mercy in behalf of the 
guilty; for “Jehovah appointed a sign for Cain, lest any 
finding him should smite him.” 

Expanding.—Enoch walking day by day with God; 
Noah diligently preparing for the deluge while he pa- 
tiently preaches to his heedless neighbors; Abraham fol- 

87 


88 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


lowing the gleam of duty and promise into a pioneer wil- 
derness, loyal to a high ideal, loyal to a graceless relative, 
loyal to his crude neighbor tribesmen, offer still other 
aspects of the complex and ever-widening demands of 
stewardship. For, whether or not we give to these ancient 
chapters a literal interpretation, we find in them the same 
inescapable principles of stewardship responsibility which 
face us in the pages of the New Testament and which 
compel recognition among “men of good will” at the 
present hour. | 


CONCRETE APPLICATION 


Property.—In the spiritual development and social ex- 
pansion of the patriarchs emerges a new aspect of stew- 
ardship. Property has begun to accumulate and to assume 
a more stable and personal character. Individual rights 
now claim recognition. The “mine” and “thine” of mate- 
rial possessions have become a recognized factor in the 
affairs of daily life. Money as a measure of value and as 
a medium of exchange already has its place in business 
intercourse. A primitive priesthood has established - it- 
self. God has shown favor to certain localities and 
has condescended to accept hospitality in habitations of- 
fered for his abode. The beginnings of orderly worship 
are at hand. | | 

The tithe —Naturally provision must be made to mate- 
rialize these ideals. God must have a house; the priest . 
must be sustained. How shall this be accomplished? At 
this point the offering of the tithe first appears. How 
long it has been observed and with what authority insti- 
tuted no intelligence is at hand. Out of a mystery as deep 
as the origin or meaning of Melchizedek, priest of the | 
Most High God, with whose name the first-known tithe is — 
inseparably linked, comes this custom, henceforth accepted © 
as sacred by succeeding generations. Possibly identical — 
with the earlier offering of the “first fruits,” possibly 
a later development of that offering, possibly of a 
separate origin, the two customs bear a strong family 
resemblance. 


HISTORICAL SOURCES 38 


CoNVICTION AND IMPULSE 


Two types.—Two striking incidents of this period re- 
cord the solemn reverence in which this form of worship 
seems to have been held. Abraham, returning from “the 
slaughter of the kings,” is met by Melchizedek, is blessed 
by him, and, in turn, bestows upon him, as a fitting offer- 
ing from a lesser to a greater and from a suppliant to 
his priest, a tenth of all the spoils of victory. (See Gen. 
14; Heb. 5 to 7.) Jacob, fleeing from a home whose privi- 
leges he has outraged, chastened by penitence and fear, 
and inspired by a reassuring dream and a promise of 
God’s providential care and favor, pledges to Jehovah 
a tenth of all future possessions on condition of the 
fulfillment of God’s promise to him. (See Gen. 27; 
28.) 

Judicial-mindedness.——Two extremes must be guarded 
against in interpreting these historic events. Much un- 
founded logic seeks to demonstrate that because Abraham 
tithed, and Jacob tithed, tithing is of divine origin and 
binding upon all Christians. Hither opinion or both is 
quite conceivably correct and is open to acceptance by all 
faithful disciples; but evidence sufficient conclusively to 
prove either divine origin or Christian obligation seems to 
be both here and elsewhere lacking. On the other hand, 
these highly conspicuous examples are often treated lightly 
and dismissed as unimportant events, as passing phases in 
human development, vestiges of early superstition, and of 
utter insignificance in the hght of New Testament faith 
and liberty. Particularly is the vow of Jacob held up to 
ridicule as the characteristic reaction of a shrewd bargain 
driver and as having no moral or spiritual content. A 
careful and unprejudiced reading of these accounts gives 
no slightest warrant for such ungenerous interpretation 
but offers convincing evidence of the wide significance and 
profound moral earnestness of both transactions. Abra- 
ham, whom Max Miiller has characterized as “the tallest 
character in all antiquity,” may be safely credited with 
untarnished sincerity and a fair degree of penetration; 
and even Jacob is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. 


90 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


Though valueless as proof texts the moral evidence is of 
the highest practical value. 


Pagan PARALLELS 


An international rite—A fact that tremendously ap- 
peals to the Christian student is the discovery that the 
offering of the tithe was almost or quite universal in the 
worship of the ancient world, that not alone among the 
Jews and their ancestral patriarchs, but among the vari- 
ous tribes and the most learned, refined and civilized na- 
tions, from the western extremities of Europe eastward to 
the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and dating back hundreds 
and thousands of years before the time of Moses, was the 
tithe offered to such gods as pagans acknowledged. On 
the authority of such classical writers as Herodotus, Pliny, 
Xenophon, and Pausanias the various Grecian tribes regu- 
larly paid tithes to their deities. We find the eloquent 
Demosthenes denouncing as sacrilege the withholding of 
tithes from the gods. The same practice prevailed among 
the Romans, among whom we find Lucullus, the richest 
Roman of history, vowing all the tithes of his vast estate 
to the gods. 

-Universal— Such modern authorities as Maspero, Dutt, 
Sayce, and Hilprecht give proof of the prevalence of tith- 
ing among the ancient Egyptians, East Indians, Babylo- | 
nians, and Assyrians. The Chinese book J Ki tells us of 
the custom in ancient China. Monacutius, in Ancient 
India, declares: “Instances are mentioned in history of 
some nations who did not offer sacrifices; but in the annals 
of all times none are found who did not pay tithes.” 

Whence?—These considerations have led some Chris- 
tian scholars to the conclusion that the principle of the 
tithe is of divine origin, that it was given to men in the 
remotest periods of history if not at the very beginning, 
that it is a method of stewardship acknowledgment which 
has always been obligatory upon men and will be so to the 
end of time, and that it is not only a patriarchal and Jew- 
ish principle of worship but a principle forever binding 


1See, for an interesting summary of such evidences, The Law of the Tithe, by 
A. V. Babbs, Chapter I. 





HISTORICAL SOURCES 91 


upon all Christians and upon all others. That the cor- 
rectness of this theory can be proved is highly improbable 
if not manifestly impossible. But let us go further. 


A QUESTION OF ORIGINS 


A high ideal.—Whose child is the tithe? It is here. 
It has been in the world from remote antiquity. It was 
practiced by devout pagans of many lands. It was a bind- 
ing obligation upon the Jew. It is loved by multitudes 
of modern Christians and seems to be growing in extent 
of influence and favor. It is not inspired by low motives 
and has no occasion for existence where evil ends are 
sought. It is uniformly linked with plans and ideals for 
the wider service of men or the more devout acknowledg- 
ment of God. It is here: whence came it? Is it, as some 
have surmised, a command given of God in the childhood 
of the race, before the tribes of men had multiplied and 
scattered over the globe? If not, how could it have gained 
so widespread an acceptance among men of varying reli- 
gions and separated by continents and centuries? 

A fine alternative—The answer seems to present an 
interesting alternative: A custom so universally diffused 
and so deep-seated in the religious convictions of men 
either must have had a common and very early external 
origin or must have resulted from a spontaneous religious 
impulse grounded in our common human nature. The im- 
pulse to tithe manifestly came to men from without or 
from within. If from without—since “grapes do not come 
of thorns’—whence could it come but from some good 
source? If from within how could it have arisen in divers 
races unless potential in the material of which those races 
were constituted? Evidently nothing can evolve which was 
not first involved. Whence came the original implanting? 

Essential nobility.—The question is plainly disconcert- 
ing, and the dilemma most perplexing to any who would 
dismiss the tithe ideal with indifference; for while the his- 
toric evidence necessary for a decisive answer is mani- 
festly lacking, the fact that on either theory—divine rey- 
elation or natural evolution—we are carried back to a 
common source compels a most respectful if not reverent 


92 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


attitude toward this persistent and general adherence to 
the religious principle of the tithe. 


Moses AND THE LAW 


The legal tithe.—-Systematic tithing became a settled 
principle with the tribes of Israel and was incorporated 
into the Mosaic statutes. “And all the tithe of the land, 
whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, 
is Jehovah’s: it is holy unto Jehovah.” (Ley. 27. 30.) 
“Thou shalt surely tithe all the increase of thy seed, that 
which cometh forth from the field year by year.” (Deut. 
14, 22.) In Num. 18. 20, 21 the priests and Levites are 
provided with an inheritance and support through the 
tithes of the other tribes. (Read in full Lev. 27. 30-34; 
Deut. 14. 22-29; Num. 18. 20-32.) 

Variations.— From these passages and from the Jewish 
Talmud and other historical sources many Bible scholars 
have sought to show that there were three different tithes 
offered under the Mosaic law, with a separate purpose in 
each case: the first, a yearly tax of one tenth of the in- 
crease of the land, used for the support of the tabernacle 
and, later, the Temple; the second, a festival tithe, for 
purposes of national assembly, feasting, and rejoicing; the 
third, offered only once in three years, for charity—a 
supply for the needy priests, Levites, widows, and orphans. ~ 

Hebrew liberality—It is readily seen, therefore, that 
if this understanding of the tithe is correct, the loyal 
Israelite was accustomed to offer religiously a far larger 
proportion than the tenth of his income, though these 
various tithes provided for much of what might be 
regarded as the social and recreational as well as the 
charitable and religious program of the people. 

High obligation.—It is only fair to say, however, that 
there seems to be wide diversity of view, among devout 
students of the Old Testament, as to the full scope and 
meaning of these various offerings, and that some uncer- 
tainty and confusion still surround the general subject 
of the tithe in ancient Israel; but it is equally fair to rec- 
ognize the fact that the people of Israel seem never to 
have questioned their duty and their legal obligation to 


HISTORICAL SOURCES 93 


tithe, and that whenever they lapsed from its observance 
they did so without attempted justification and as sinners 
and lawbreakers in the sight of God. (Read Neh. 10. 34- 
39; Deut. 8. 11-20; Mal. 3. 1-12.) 


PropHEetTic UNFOLDMENT 


Spiritually expansive.—Inevitably the recognition of 
stewardship obligation widened and deepened with the 
religious development of the nation. The enthusiastic dec- 
larations of the writers of the Psalms that “the earth is 
Jehovah’s, and the fulness thereof,” and that 


“Every beast of the forest is mine, 
And the cattle upon a thousand hills,” 


quickly expand into David’s devout confession, as the rich 
gifts for the temple come pouring in, “For all ‘things come 
of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.” 

Ethical stewardship.—But stewardship strikes deeper 
still, It becomes so personal and so ethical that mere 
sacrifice and offering, without true heart worship and with- 
out appropriate accompaniment of holy character, justice, 
charity, mercy, equity, love for man and God, becomes 
not only valueless but highly offensive to God. In the pro- 
phetic books and conspicuously in the prophecy of Amos 
we find the most scathing denunciations of Israel be- 
cause of ingratitude, disobedience, injustice, covetous- 
ness, trickery, and antisocial self-seeking, together with 
such high ideals of social stewardship as would do 
honor to the most advanced program of the modern 
church. (Read 1 Sam. 15; Isa. 1; 58; Hos. 6. 4-11.) 


For Stupy AND DIscussIon 


1. What, in your opinion, was the origin of the tithe? 
Give your reasons. 

2. Can you suggest a better general method than tith- 
ing? 

3. What do you think was Jacob’s real motive in prom- 
ising to tithe? Why? 

4. Does the progressive broadening of the stewardship 
idea imply the outgrowing of the tithe? 


For Reference and Study 


Matt. 23. 23. 
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye 
tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the 
weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: 
but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the 
other undone. 


Luke 11. 42. 
But woe unto you Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and 
every herb, and pass over justice and the love of God: but 
these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 


Matt. 5. 20. 
For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall 
in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. 


Rom. 10. 12. 
For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the 
same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon 
him. 


Rom. 6. 15. 
What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but 
under grace? God forbid. 


Luke 16. 10. 
He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: 
and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous 
also in much. 


Mark 12. 41-44. 

And he sat down over against the treasury, and beheld how 
the multitude cast money into the treasury: and many that 
were rich cast in much. And there came a poor widow, and 
she cast in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called 
unto him his disciples, and said unto them, Verily I say unto 
you, This poor widow cast in more than all they that are cast- 
ing into the treasury: for they all did cast in of their super- 
fluity; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even 
all her living. 


Matt. 6. 25, 26, 33. 

Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, 
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your 
body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the 
food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of 
the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor 
gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. 
Are not ye of much more value than they?... But seek 
ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these 
things shall be added unto you. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE MASTER AND MONEY 


New TESTAMENT STEWARDSHIP 


The Giver of all_—tIn the teachings of the New Testa- 
ment we find stewardship raised to its highest power. The 
already acknowledged source of all being is acclaimed as 
the Father of every good. “He. . . gave you from heaven 
rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food 
and gladness” (Acts 14.17). “In him we live, and move, 
and have our being. . . . For we are also his offspring” 
(Acts 17. 28). “Hvery good gift and every perfect gift 
is from above” (James 1. 17). Also, a new relation of 
filial trust is established. “Be not anxious . . . Behold 
the birds . . . Consider the lilies . . . Fear not, little 
flock.” (Matt. 6. 19-34; Luke 12. 22-34.) “Give, and it 
shall be given unto you . . . running over” (Luke 6. 38). 
“God is able to make all grace abound unto you” (2 Cor. 
9.8). “If God is for us, who ts against us?” (Rom. 8. 
(aby ey 

Divine living.—Moreover, a new and exalted concep- 
tion of human life is everywhere apparent. “Ye are the 
light of the world” (Matt. 5. 14). “Ye are my friends” 
(John 15. 14). “Know ye not that your body is a temple 
OL ihe Holy spirit. . 2?” (1 Cor. 6.19). “Ye may 
become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1. 4). 
“Whether we live . . . or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 
14. 8). 

Fraternity.—Likewise, a new spirit of brotherhood, a 
world-wide catholicity, takes possession of men’s hearts. 
A tribal enemy becomes “the good Samaritan,” and hope- 
lessly prejudiced Peter welcomes the “unclean” Corne- 
lius into the new fellowship, and Saul the Pharisee at 
last exclaims: “Who maketh thee to differ ?” (Luke 10. 25- 
37; Acts 10, 11; 1 Cor. 4. 7). 

Each for all.—New and finer motives for benevolence 
are offered. “Freely ye received, freely give” (Matt. 10. 

95 


96 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


8). “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 
20. 35). “Ye were bought with a price: glorify God 
therefore” (Acts 6. 20). “God loveth a cheerful giver” 
(2 Cor. 9.7). “Ye know the grace of . . . Christ, that, 
though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” 
(2 Cor. 8. 9). Growing out of this spirit, in the pente- 
costal days of revolution and peril, the believing multi- 
tude “were of one heart and soul: and not one of them said 
that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; 
but they had all things common” (Acts 4. 32). | 


Dutry—or PRIVILEGE? 


A great trust.—Stewardship is discovered also to be 

a lofty privilege—“good stewards of the manifold grace 
of God” (1 Pet. 4.10). Paul’s very commission to preach 
was a sacred “stewardship intrusted to” him (1 Cor. 9. 
17), and all the apostles were to be accounted as “stew- 
ards of the mysteries of God,” in which form of steward- 
ship it is “required . . . that a man be found faithful” 
(1 Cor. 4. 1, 2). As a preparation for their unexampled 
benevolence the churches of Macedonia “first . . . gave 
their own selves to the Lord” (2 Cor. 8. 1-5). Moreover, 
in the light of his stewardship responsibilities shall every 
man be judged (Matt. 16. 24-28; Rev. 20. 12, 18). 


Accountable—The sense of stewardship responsibility | 


is further deepened by Jesus’ parable of the talents and 
the pounds (Matt. 25. 14-30; Luke 19. 11-27); by his 
declaration “Except your righteousness shall exceed the 
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no 
wise enter the kingdom” (Matt. 5. 20) ; and by his solemn 
discourse on watchfulness (Luke 12. 35- 48). Paul’s warn- 
ing charge to Timothy (1 Tim. 6. 6-21) profoundly em- 
phasizes the Master’s own words. 

As to money.—Fidelity in the stewardship of money is 
solemnly enjoined in Jesus’ principle: “Render . . . unto 
Cesar the things that are Cesar’s; and unto God the 
things that are God’s” (Matt. 22. 21); in his parable of 
the “unjust steward,” with its application (Luke 16. 1- 
13); in his encounter with the “rich young man” (Mark 
10. 17-31) ; and in the parable of the “rich fool” (Luke 


THE MASTER AND MONEY 97 


12. 13-21). Paul exhorts the Corinthians to lay by in 
store as they may prosper (1 Cor. 16. 2) and inquires, 
“Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under 
grace?” (Rom. 6. 15-23), declaring that no covetous man 
has “any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of 
God” (Hph. 5. 5). The tragic end of Ananias and Sap- 
phira illustrates the merited condemnation of a repudi- 
ated and betrayed stewardship. 


Dip Jesus TitHe? 


Determinative—If it could be definitely established 
that Jesus regularly paid the tithe of his own income, and 
that he approved the practice not only for his own nation 
but for all men at all times, the question of the Christian’s _ 
obligation would be settled forever. If, on the other — 
hand, it could be proved that Jesus did not tithe, or that he © 
was indifferent to this custom, or that he or his apostles had — 
given utterance to some principle that would annul or | 
supersede the tithe, the obligation to tithe would be inde-. © 
fensible, and the word itself would speedily vanish from 
the Christian’s vocabulary. Unfortunately the evidence 
on both sides of the question is so scant as to preclude 
absolute certainty. 

Scant evidence.—There are only four direct references 
to the tithe in the entire New Testament, and these are 
brief and incidental. They contain, however, a very con- 
siderable deposit of important evidence. In Matt. 23. 23 
Jesus exclaims: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and 
have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, 
mercy, and faith: but these ought ye to have done, and not 
to have left the other undone.” In Luke 11. 42 we find 
substantially the same message: “But woe unto you Phar- 
isees! for ye tithe mint and rue and every herb, and pass 
over justice and the love of God: but these ought ye to have 
done, and not to leave the other undone.” Again, in the 
parable of the Pharisee and the publican we find the Phar- 
isee declaring: “I give tithes of all that I get” (Luke 18. 
9-14) ; and in Heb. 7. 1-9 we have the interesting story 


98 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


of Abraham’s tithe and the writer’s application of the same 
to Hebrew history. 

Weighty facts—From these references some important 
deductions may be made: (1) that tithing was in such » 
repute in the New Testament period that the writer of the’ 
Hebrews uses it in illustrating one of his most important 
doctrinal discussions ; (2) that it was universally practiced 
by the Pharisees, the religious sect most punctilious in the 
observance of every detail of the law (this is supported by 
abundant contemporary evidence); (3) that the Phar- 
isees regarded the offering of the tithe not only as a legal ; 
obligation but as a highly commendable virtue; (4) that! 
Jesus admitted their unfailing diligence in tithing; and 
(5) that, most important of all, Jesus unqualifiedly coms | 
mended the custom and affirmed the obligation of the’ 
Pharisees to observe it. a 


a4 


Morat Myopia : ‘ 


The peril of literalism.—It may be profitable at this | 


point-te turn aside for a moment from our main dis- 
cussion to take note of certain moral hazards attendant 
upon this expression of stewardship so highly scriptural 
and so manifestly acceptable to the Master. ‘The very 


references, quoted above, which demonstrate the approval | 
of Jesus also show, with equal clearness, the well-known — 


human tendency to pervert and degrade the very highest 
gifts of God. The tithes and offerings of the law, well 
calculated to influence the giver to a grateful recog- 
nition of the Father’s bounty, to relax the tightening cords 
of covetousness and detach the life from the mere mate- 
rial, and to inspire a sense of partnership with God in 
the achievements of his kingdom, had come to be looked 
upon by the Pharisee as an end rather than a means, as a 
valuable concession to the Almighty and a ground of self- 
righteous complacency. Having measured out his tithe and 
performed the specified fast, the self-gratulatory Pharisee 
_ considered that his religious obligations were met, and 
that he stood, in relation to men, as a shining exception 
and example ‘and, in relation to God, as a sort of moral 
patron and benefactor. That he had missed entirely the 


: 


| 


THE MASTER AND MONEY 99 


inner meaning of the law and shut himself off from vital 
religion seems never to have penetrated his thought. It 
was this slavish literalism that wrought the Pharisees? 
moral paralysis, a hteralism that, though fortunately sel- 
dom observed to-day, is still possible as a source of spir- 
itual pride and a blight upon Christian character. Ané 
it is this phase of legalism rather than any overzealous 
or even superstitious obedience to some requirement of 
Scripture which threatens the disciple’s spiritual safety. 
The husk for the kernel.—The folly of the Pharisee was 
in mistaking the less for the greater, the incidental for 
the essential, the letter for the spirit. That God’s temple 
should be adequately supported by systematic contribution 
was indeed highly important, yet vastly more important 
was it that God’s will should be done among men in deeds 
of mercy, compassion, justice, and love; that all of life 
should be lived in this spirit, and that God should be wor- 
shiped in trusting faith and affectionate devotion. The 
Christian is a steward of love and justice in the making 
of money quite as truly as in its expenditure. It is quite 
improbable that the twentieth-century steward who is 
schooled in this way of thinking will fall into unjust, un- 
merciful, or undevout habits, for the self-denial and heart 
expansion involved in the setting apart of the tithe tend 
to fortify the spiritual life against self-centeredness; but 
these things happened in the first century, and it is welt 
to be on guard against their happening again. Had the 
ancient tither remembered the Old Testament epitome of 
the law, reiterated by the Master in the New, “Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, . . . and thy 
neighbor as thyself,” he might have spared himself the 
Master’s disapproval and his age the curse of pharisaism. 
This principle of unselfish love the Christian steward 
must never forget. Sacrifice and offering are made not 
to enrich creation’s Owner but to warm the heart of man 
toward God, to discipline the human motive, to provide 
means of democratic cooperation, to afford a channel of 
helpfulness to needier men, and to acknowledge the right 
of God to unabated love and loyalty. When these fail of 
fulfillment, the high purpose of God is thwarted. 


100 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


ARE CHRISTIANS INCLUDED ? 


A high ideal.—Did Jesus’ affirmation of the Pharisees’ 
obligation to tithe embrace all Jews and all future disci- 
ples, or was it the mere approval of a good custom on the 
part of those who were then observing it? There is no 
direct evidence. But there is evidence to show that Jesus 
looked upon the Pharisees’ devotion to the law as an atti- 
tude worthy of emulation on the part of every Jew, and 
that the only cause for his repeated denunciations was 
the hypocrisy, inhumanity, and burdensome formality with 
which the Pharisees were poisoning the religious life of 
the nation, and not because of their rigid observance of 
the law. “The scribes and the Pharisees,” proclaims 
Jesus as he speaks “to the multitudes and to his disciples,” 
“sit on Moses’ seat: all things therefore whatsoever they 
bid you, these do and observe: but do not ye after their 
works; for they say, and do not” (Matt. 23 1-3). And this 
is the word to his first disciples in the Sermon on the 
Mount: “For I say unto you, that except your right- 
eousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of 
heaven” (Matt. 5. 20). Faithful obedience to constituted 
law, as opposed to a ceremonious legalism and man-made 
refinements, seems everywhere to have met the Master’s 
full approval. 

Where Pharisees failed—The inference is frequently 
drawn from the fact that the Pharisee’s proud prayer in 
the Temple contains the statement “I give tithes of all that 
I get” that Jesus is holding up to ridicule this practice. 
A careful reading will disclose the direct opposite. The 
Pharisee is here displaying a list of acknowledged virtues, 
every one of which would at once be recognized by Jesus’ 
auditors, but in spite of which conspicuous virtues this 
vain man, who had no sense of the moral value of his 
deeds but prided himself on their legal correctness, left 
the Temple unjustified, while the poor publican, a moral 
beggar, found approval. Indeed, if Jesus here discredits 
the Pharisee’s tithing practice he just as definitely .dis- 
credits his fasting and his abstention from extortion, 


THE MASTER AND MONEY 101 


dishonesty, and adultery. It was the Pharisees’ moral 
stupidity, in spite of their unusual correctness of life, 
which repeatedly evoked the Master’s indignation. 

A general rule—From such evidence as we have the 
conclusion is inescapable that Jesus recognized the ancient 
law of the tithe as still applying without partiality to the 
people of Israel, including such disciples as were then 
following him. .And from this point it is only a short. 
step to the conviction that a method so fully approved 
by the Master for his own day could hardly fail of high 
acceptability to him in every age: 


’ 
THE Tine or LIKELIHOOD 


Supposing.—“Did Jesus tithe?” No word of Scrip- | 
ture discloses. We must remember, however, that he was | 
a loyal Jew, son of a Jewish mother, trained from child- 
hood with ceaseless diligence to reverence and obey every 
syllable of the law; that he repeatedly commended those 
who observed its requirements and declared that not one 
jot or tittle should pass from the law until all had been 
fulfilled. We must bear in mind also that his life was 
led under the blaze of pitiless publicity, that every act was 
minutely observed, and every deviation from the ordi- 
nary noted and praised or criticized. His natural and 
rational treatment of the Sabbath, so normal in our eyes, 
brought down unceasing torrents of wrath upon his head 
and left a train of controversies from end to end of the 
gospel story. Is it conceivable that so plain a command- 
ment of the national law, and one so scrupulously ob- 
served by the religious leaders of the day, could have been 
disobeyed or overlooked by One so completely under the 
hostile scrutiny of the public, and no protest be made, and 
no intimation of public controversy find its way into the 
records of the Evangelists? 'The same considerations ap- 
ply to the story of Paul’s career save that in the case of 
this former Pharisee the provocation would have been 
greatly aggravated; and to the experience of the entire 
body of Jewish Christians as recorded in the Acts and the 
Kpistles. 


402 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


A SrrRance SILENCE 


Unanswered ?—But the question that interests and per- 
plexes us most of all is this: Does Jesus expect the pres- 
ent-day Christian to tithe? Does he require it from me? 
if we could only answer this we should dissolve the doubt 
and set at rest the harassing uncertainty in many a dis- 
ciple’s heart; but we cannot with assurance penetrate the 
Thought of the Infinite, and he has left no clear and 
undisputed commandment. Strange it is that he did not 
fell us plainly—he who cleared so many mysteries and is 
himself “the way, the truth, and the life.” He might 
have done it with a sentence. Knowing this, he still did 
not do it. 

Love—or law?—Perhaps he took for granted that his 
disciples, newborn from above, born to a richer and vaster 
faith, would not abate their devotion, would not diminish 
their offerings, would not overvalue or grudge their sacri- 
fices, but, with the abandon of Mary of Bethany, would 
count no cost too great when love prompted the offering. 
Bid he overestimate us? Or did he allow this ordinance 
to fall into the background that he might test the quality 
of our affection and see, as he waited through the long 
centuries, whether love is really more powerful than legal 
requirements, whether men are as devoted “under grace” 
as “under law’? 

Taken for granted.—Here again we can only infer. If 
Jesus tithed, or approved it in others, or even tolerated 
its continuance when he might have released us from 
it, even though he does not desire it from us, how can 
we reconcile this with his unfailing frankness? He surely 
felt perfectly free to contradict or modify the law of 
Moses. Again and again he braved the wrath and over- 
turned the religious foundations of his contemporaries. 
He trampled ruthlessly on the Pharisee’s Sabbath preju- 
dices, declaring: “The Son of man is lord ... of the 
sabbath.” Who can doubt that, had the tithe appeared to 
him an outworn custom or a burden “too grievous to be 
borne,” he would have uttered his protest and wrought de- 
liverance? That he found it in daily use, particularly 


THE MASTER AND MONEY 103 


stressed by the most arrogant religious sect of his day, 
gave it even incidental commendation, and left it in un- 
disturbed security would seem to indicate that he expected 
his disciples to take it for granted as one of the accepted, 
uncontroverted, normal, and everyday virtues of the 
Christian life. 


“His Own HovusEHOLD” 


Inescapable.—If Jesus approved the tithe for the igno- 
rant and poverty-laden men of his own time and nation— 
he who played no favorites among men, who was no re- 
specter of persons, whose vision was so long-range, 
and whose principles so eternal that he could. declare, 
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall 
not pass away”—can we think that he expects less of the 
men of to-day, with their highly developed civilization, 
their creative genius, and their boundless stores of wealth? 
That he demands it of us would be difficult of proof, that 
any Christian is under legal obligation to tithe we are 
not able to discover nor ready to admit; but that the Man 
who was rich and for our sakes became poor would as- 
suredly appreciate, quite probably expects, this tribute of 
love from grateful disciples, is hardly open to doubt. In 
other words, with the advent of the gospel the child Stew- 
ardship has come of age, and formal insistence on the de- 
tails of discipline is no longer to be thought of; yet the 
eternal principles of filial obedience and devotion, un- 
changed from age to age, apply in vastly greater measure 
and with inescapable moral vehemence. 


For Stupy AND Discussion 


1. In what respects does New Testament differ from 
Old Testament stewardship? Does one exclude the other? 

2. Why did not Jesus and the apostles deliberately 
teach tithing? 

3. Are there any moral perils in tithing? What? 

4, Can we take the widow’s gift of two mites as the 
Christian’s standard of giving? Why? 

5. What was Jesus’ general attitude toward the Old 
Testament Scriptures ? 


‘For Reference and Study 


Acts 20. 35. 

In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring ye 
ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the 
Lord Jesus, that he himself said, It is more blessed to give 
than to receive. 


Mark 10. 28-31. 

Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have 
followed thee. Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, There is no 
man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, 
or father, or children, or lands, for my sake, and for the 
gospel’s sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this 
time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and 
children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to 
come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last; and 
the last first. 


Luke 12. 35-48. | 

Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning; 
and be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their lord, 
when he shall return from the marriage feast; that, when he 
cometh and knocketh, they may straightway open unto him. 
Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh 
shall find watching: .verily I say unto you, that he shall gird 
himself, and make them sit down to meat, and shall come and 
serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, and 
if in the third, and find them so, blessed are those servants. 
But Know this, that if the master of the house had known in 
what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched, 
and not have left his house to be broken through. Be ye also 
ready: for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh. 

And Peter said, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or 
even unto all? And the Lord said, Who then is the faithful 
and wise steward, whom his Lord shall set over his household, 
to give them their portion of food in due season? Blessed is 
that servant, whom his Lord when he cometh shall find so 
doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will set him over 
all that he hath. But if that servant shall say in his heart, 


My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the men- , 


servants and the maidservants, and to eat and drink, and to 
be drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when 
he expecteth not, and in an hour when he knoweth not, and 
shall cut him asunder, and appoint his portion with the un- 
faithful. And that servant, who knew his lord’s will, and 
made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten 
with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things 
worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And to 
whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; 
and to whom they commit much, of him will they ask the more. 


CHAPTER X 
TWENTY CENTURIES 


Facina New ConpDiITIONS 


Brotherhood.—We have noted the gracious expansion 
of the stewardship impulse in the pentecostal enthusiasm 
of the early church. When the religious and the social 
foundations were shaken, when the fate of individual dis- 
ciples and of the infant church hung in the balance, and 
when the early establishment of a new Christian king- 
dom on earth seemed imminent, “the multitude of them 
that believed were of one heart and soul: and not one of 
them said that aught of the things which he possessed was 
his own; but they had all things common . . . Neither 
was there among them any that lacked.” (See Acts 4. 
32-35; also Acts 2. 41-47.) 

Not communism.—Such community of goods had no 
apparent connection with any theory of economic or so- 
cial readjustment, but was prompted by a sense of others’ 
need, of a relaxation of absolute individual ownership, and 
of the prior rights of the Kingdom and of the new broth- 
erhood on all one’s possessions. “It was,” says Harvey 
Reeves Calkins, “a stewardship, and not a communism of 
possessions.””! 

The permanent element.—This demonstration of fra- 
ternal stewardship was of short duration. However need- 
ful and practicable in those days of ferment and persecu- 
tion, it seems not to have been adapted to permanent use. 
The impulse to share with others, however, and to hold 
all one’s property in trust for the new allegiance seems to 
have remained with at least the first generation of. the 
early church in Judea. The entire bearing of Peter and 
John, of Stephen and Barnabas and Paul, as well as of the 
rank and file of the Hebrew Christians, seems to accord 


14 Man and His Money, page 67. 
105 


106 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


with this early acknowledgment of the Kingdom’s claim 
upon all. 


PAGAN HANDICAPS 


The bent twig.—The reason for this is not far to seek 
if we recall that every Jewish Christian had been trained 
in early childhood, and later in the synagogue school and 
Sabbath service, to recognize God as Creator, Owner, and 
Giver of all and had been diligently taught to “acknowledge 
this claim of God upon all wealth by paying the Temple 
tax of the tithe. Among the converts from paganism, 
however, the case was far different. Their sacrifices had 
never been acknowledgments of divine ownership, but re- 
luctant bribes to propitiate the wrath or to purchase the 
favor of their deities, or, at best, as “gifts” of gratitude 
for favors received. What they had was their own, to do. 
with as they pleased; and if the gods acquired any of it, 
it was on condition of their continued good behavior or 
for value received. 

Stubborn material—Thus it is that while Hebrew 
Christians were pouring out their meager possessions for 
others, the converts from paganism required long, pa- 
tient, elementary instruction in the joy and the art of 
giving. Corinthian people, Romans, Galatians, Cretians, 
and others were slow to understand and accept the first 
principles of stewardship, and Paul and his contemporary 
Christian teachers were compelled to put forth the most 
unremitting endeavor to coax them into an attitude of 
even tolerable benevolence. The difference is simple but 
world-wide: all the training of the Jewish Christian had 
led him to conceive of property as a stewardship; that of 
the pagan convert as personal ownership.? 


A PERENNIAL PLANT 


Unconquerable.—The divine vitality of Christian stew- 
ardship is nowhere better illustrated than in its ultimate 
triumph over the barbaric conditions and the unregenerate 
human selfishness against which it was compelled to strug- 


*See on all this the thorough discussion by Harvey Reeves Calkins in A 
Man and His Money, and in Chapter II of Stewardship Starting Points. 


' 


TWENTY CENTURIES 107 


gle in the centuries which followed. Buried under fath- 
oms of ignorance, smothered by pagan conceptions of 
ownership, trampled and broken by ruthless self-seeking 
both within and without the church, the football of kings, 
the weapon of priests, the scourge of the oppressor, it still 
survived, struck its root deeper, and, like the Russian 
thistle, arose and spread and flourished again. Its fiber 
was the stern stuff of faith. Be 

Church Fathers unanimous.—Almost without exception © 
the renowned Fathers of the early church—Justin Martyr, 
Treneeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Je- 
rome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom—though them- 
selves trophies won from pagan races, have left their own 
written record of allegiance to the principles of steward- 
ship and to its specific application in the proportionate . 
offering of the tenth. And for them it was a thankless 
task, for already was the church drifting rapidly into the 
current of formal ecclesiasticism and medieval supersti- 
tion and away from the earlier and loftier principles of 
simple brotherhood and filial stewardship. Even in the 
darkest of the Dark Ages there seems to have been no 
generation in which some earnest voice was not uplifted 
in testimony to the sacred responsibilities of this faith. 

Reformation voices—As the church begins to emerge » 
into the light of our modern day, we hear again the voice 
of faithful prophets calling men to the duties of steward- 
ship and pleading still for at least the tenth for King- | 
dom purposes. Conspicuous among these are Martin 
Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox—three of the fore- 
most reformers of the Christian centuries. Even this high 
standard is left in the background by John Wesley, who, 
after deducting from his meager income a mere fraction 
for his own living, spends the remainder on religion and 
charity, leaving to his followers the well-known maxim 
“Harn all you can; save all you can; give all you can.’ 
To his ardent faith material’ substance has no charm or 
value except as it may be employed to exalt Christ and | 
extend his domain among men. 


3¥For a brief and very parceene recital of such testimony see The Law of the 
Tithe, by A. V. Babbs, Chapter V 


108 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


ARITHMETIC AND CoMMON SENSE 


More compelling even than the persuasions of holy men 
and reformers is the logic of events. “Seeing is believ- 
ing,” and the results that have followed upon such experi- 
mentation in practical stewardship as the church has from 
time to time ventured upon provide evidence that cannot 
easily be overthrown. 

A stewardship revival The middle of the nineteenth 
century found the great missionary boards of the churches, 
which had struggled along for years with inadequate re- 
sources, in a languishing condition. At the same time 
great national developments in America, Europe, and the 
Orient, together with recent discoveries of vast deposits of 
gold in America, Australia, and, later, Africa, with ample 
harvests, and the multiplication of machinery and trans- 
portation facilities, were resulting in new and unprece- 
dented accumulations of wealth. These conditions inev- 
itably awoke, in Kingdom-minded men, a sense of the 
power of money and of its appalling need and enormous 
possibilities in Kingdom expansion. “The next great idea 
to-be . . . made prominent in the church is . . . the 
right relation of Christian men to their property,” de- 
clared the eminent church historian Abel Stevens. “One 
more revival, only one more is needed,” cried the great 
New England prophet Horace Bushnell, “—the revival of 
Christian stewardship, the consecration of the money 
power to God. When that revival comes, the kingdom 
of God will come in a day.” 

New enthusiasm.—Soon, with one consent, the Christian 
world was turning anew to the possibilities of tithing stew- 
ardship. The great tract societies in Europe and Amer- 
ica offered generous cash prizes for the best essays on the 
subject. In the contests that followed, men lke Abel 
Stevens, of New York, and Joseph Parker, of City Tem- 
ple, London, were winners of such prizes, ranging in value 
from $100 to $750. 

Ocular demonstration.—One prompt result of this wide- 
spread propaganda was the large increase in missionary ~ 
giving. Within fifteen years, from 1850 to 1865, the 


TWENTY CENTURIES 109 


boards that represented the leading missionary churches 
made gains as follows: Congregational, from $251,000 to 
$534, 000; Baptist, from $104,000 to $152,000; Presbyter- 
ian, from $126,000 to $271,000; Methodist, from $104,- 
000 to $631,000, or. an increase of more than 500 per 
cent!* In this connection it is interesting to note that 
the recent remarkable increase in missionary giving in 
the Methodist Episcopal Church through the Centenary 
movement (an increase ranging from $16,236,747 paid 
during the five years 1914-18, to $67,910,229, paid dur- 
ing the five years 1919-23, or more than a fourfold in- 
crease), together with enormous gains in local church, 
ministerial, charitable, hospital, and college support, is 
universally credited, in large measure, to the revival of 
Christian-stewardship teaching and practice. 


_SvrEWarRDs IN BusINEss 


The business test.—Some of the most striking results of 
such recurrences of interest in stewardship spring from 
the vital seeds that fall upon the impressionable hearts 
of serious-minded young laymen. And no more convinc- 
ing testimony to the sanity and efficiency of tithing stew- 
ardship can be’ offered than the lives and achievements of 
certain men in the modern church who, beginning in 
poverty and obscurity, have taken God into partnership 
in their labor and in the expenditure of money and, 
as they have grown in wealth and power, have poured into 
God’s treasuries the rich fruitage of their material achieve- 
ment. 

Notable men approve.—The century just past and the 
first years of the one now current provide an inspiring 
list of large givers. William H. Gladstone, late premier 
of the British Empire, made tithing the constant practice 
of his life and urged it upon his own son as a principle 
never to be abandoned. John D. Rockefeller, contributor 
of half a billion dollars; John S. Kennedy, New York 
capitalist, who began in poverty and died leaving an es- 
tate of sixty millions, half of which went to philanthropic 


On the events of this most interesting period see A Man and His Money, 
Calkins, Chapters VY, V1, and VII. 


110 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


causes; Jacob H. Schiff, financier extraordinary, whose 
operations were on an international scale; Matthias 
W. Baldwin, founder of the Baldwin Locomotive Works; 
William Colgate, founder of a fortune and a college; 
Isaac Rich and Alden Spear, builders of Boston Univer- 
sity; Senator Macdonald, of Toronto; John §. Huyler, 
manufacturer, lay evangelist, benefactor of churches, mis- 
sions, hospitals, and colleges; Daniel Sharp Ford, editor 
and owner of the Youth’s Companion, together with scores 
of names eminent in the world of business and finance, 
join in their testimony to the wisdom and the joy which 
commend this practice to the favor of all disciples.® 


TWENTIETH-CENTURY PROPHETS 


No age is without its seers and its men of vision, such 
as can look beyond the fleeting appearances of the present 
and interpret the will, plans, and purposes of God. With 
the sincerest reverence we may declare that as true 
prophets and apostles are living among us to-day as adorn 
with their names the pages of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. 

Seers of our own day.—Bishop James M. Thoburn, 
whose interpretation of India’s needs and _ possibilities 
doubtless turned toward the Kingdom more pagan souls 
than the work of any other preacher since the days of 
Saint Paul; and Bishop James W. Bashford, who left 
the presidency of a college to become a humble missionary, 
and whose wisdom unlocked more mysteries and more 
doors in China than the hand of any other man of his 
generation—who can deny these men the right to counsel 
the church in matters of daily duty as stewards of God? 
No less prophetic are such devoted servanis of the 
Kingdom as John R. Mott, the world’s most conspicuous 
layman; S. Earl Taylor, prophet of the new missionary 
era in the churches; Robert E. Speer, J. Campbell White, 
Sherwood Eddy, and a score of others equally consecrated 
to Kingdom advancement. And it is these men who are 
urgent and conspicuous in their call to the church to real- 
ize the responsibilities of Christian stewardship as the only 


6 For a full discussion of such cases see American Tithers, by James L. Sayler. 


TWENTY CENTURIES 111 


adequate means to a speedy triumph of Christ in the 
world. 

An infallible solution.—‘‘When Horace Pitkin, who la- 
ter died as one of the martyrs of China, read a paper on 
proportionate giving and the principle of the tithe, it 
burst on me as clear as sunlight that this was the right, 
the privilege, and the duty of Christians. If only the 
Christian world would come to it, my friends, what could 
we not do?” said Robert E. Speer in a recent address. John 
R. Mott is reported to have declared a few months ago: 
“Tf the Christian people of America would lay on the al- 
tar of Christ for the world’s redemption the tenth of their 
income, we could, within five years, set in motion the ma- 
chinery which would guarantee the preaching of the gospel 
to every man, woman, and child on earth in the generation 
in which you and [I are living.” “It grows clear to me,” 
says Bishop Bashford,® “that were Christians to set aside 
one tenth of their income for His service, the world would 
be speedily evangelized.” 

The call to the church of such Kingdom evangelists and 
world observers as these cannot fall upon the ears of Chris- 
tian men unheeded without guilt and condemnation while 
-our present financial plans and scale of giving are so 
inadequate. 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH 


In view of all that has gone before it would appear to 
be no difficult matter for a modern Christian, fairly well 
acquainted with his Bible and observant of the everyday 
facts of human character and conduct, to formulate for 
himself a rational statement of stewardship faith with a 
practical formula for its expression. Such a statement 
probably would include the following items: 

My creed.—lI believe in Christian stewardship because 
I regard it as a foundation principle of the Christian 
faith. Only as I embrace it with my whole heart can 
I adequately fulfill the “royal law,” which demands that 
I love God with all my powers and my neighbor as myself. 
I believe that I ought systematically to offer to God’s serv- 

6 God’s Missionary Plan for the World, page 112. 





112 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


ice one tenth of my income, not from any superstitious 
fear, nor because it was a Jewish law, nor from any hope 
of material reward, nor because I am persuaded that this 
is the last word in methods of beneficence. Should provi- 
dence seem at any time to indicate a better method or a 
different proportion, I should without hesitancy abandon 
this for that. I offer the tenth for these reasons: 

Its basis.—It has been deliberately recommended as the 
standard of Christian giving in the church of which I am 
a member. I cannot believe that this would have been 
done without adequate and convincing reasons. It is a 
mode in constant use in Scripture history, is honored from 
beginning to end of the Old Testament, receives the un- 
qualified even if incidental commendation of Christ, and 
brings upon itself no word or intimation of disapproval. 
It has been commended and urged by the prophetic voices 
of the church through the Christian centuries. It. seems 
to be rapidly gaining in favor with devout, enlightened, 
and educated disciples. It is systematic, businesslike, and 
modern in its application, and has been repeatedly proved 
productive of material benefit through wiser methods of 
personal and domestic economy and a better ordering of 
finance. It is on the whole more equitable in the distribu- 
tion of the burdens of Kingdom support than any plan I 
have ever known, presenting far fewer inequalities than 
any conceivable plan of haphazard, voluntary, or appor- 
tioned giving. It is not more burdensome than I can well 
endure, in this age and land of opportunity and plenty, if 
I give due regard to a reasonable balance in my personal 
expenditures. It is urgently needed, to meet the present 
and prospective demands of Kingdom promotion and sup- 
port, as nothing less than this proportion from each dis- 
ciple will suffice for the providential program of the pres- 
ent age. It is apparently adequate, if offered in like pro- 
portion by all Christ’s followers, to meet every demand 
for Kingdom enterprise as at present expressed or contem- 
plated. It is a practice which yields me constant satisfac- 
tion, contentment, and spiritual joy, and relieves me of 
the embarrassments, discomforts, and inconveniences of 
occasional or spasmodic giving. It is a method which 


TWENTY CENTURIES 113 


seems everywhere to have brought new courage, moral 
prosperity, and spiritual life to such individuals and 
churches as have adopted it, and to give promise of a 
more perfect unity, wider fraternity, and more intelligent 
piety among Christians of every denomination. It is alto- 
gether the best method of church finance which I have 
been able to discover and is therefore accepted, without 
question, as God’s present plan for me. 


For Stupy ANp Discussion 


1. What is the significance of the pentecostal commu- 
nity of goods? 

2. Contrast the pagan with the Hebrew tithe. 

3. Contrast the pagan and the Christian view of prop- 
erty. : 

4. Is the favorable attitude toward tithing of promi- 
nent Christian business men a valid argument in its favor? 
Give your reasons. 

5. What is the significance to you of the attitude of the 
great missionary leaders toward tithing? 

6. Prepare a careful “confession” of your own stew- 

ardship faith. 


For Reference and Study 


Prov. 3. 9, 10. 
Honor Jehovah with thy substance, 
And with the first-fruits of all thine increase: 
So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, 
And thy vats shall overflow with new wine. 


Prov. 11. 24, 25. 
There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more; 
And there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth 
only to want. 
The liberal soul shall be made fat; 
And he that watereth shall be watered also himself. 


Luke 6. 38. 

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed 
down, shaken together, running over, shall they give into your 
bosom. For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured 
to you again. 


2. Cor. 8. 15. 
As it is written, He that gathered much had nothing over; 
and he that gathered little had no lack. 


1 Tim. 4. 8. 
For bodily exercise is profitable for a little; but godliness is 
profitable for all things, having promise of the life which now 
is, and of that which is to come. 


2 Cor. 9. 6-11. 

But this J say, He that soweth sparingly shall reap also 
sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also 
bountifully. Let each man do according as he hath purposed 
in his heart: not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth 
a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound 
unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything, 
may abound unto every good work: as it is written, 

He hath scattered abroad, he hath given to the poor; 

His righteousness abideth for ever. 

And he that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, 
shall supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase 
the fruits of your righteousness: ye being enriched in every- 
thing unto all liberality, which worketh through us thanksgiv- 
ing to God. 


oo 


—— 


CHAPTER XI 
ECONOMIC ASPECTS 


PREREQUISITE 


Crude business methods.—The business affairs of the 
church should be on a sound economic basis, so practical, 
equitable, and adequate that the simplest-minded denizen 
of the community may understand and approve them. 
That such is not the case to-day is universally admitted. 
The unbusinesslike practices of the church are the laugh- 
ing stock of society. Partiality in the distribution of rehi- 
gious burdens is a constant irritation. The shirking of 
responsibility and the financial jockeying to escape or read- 
just burdens is a perennial source of sorrow to faithful 
men. 

Paralysis of benevolence.—By reason of this our King- 
dom enterprises are frequently paralyzed. Great forward 
movements in national philanthropy or for the timely re- 
demption of some accessible mission field have been known 
to collapse for lack of united and adequate support in the 
critical hour. Christian equity is outraged by an unequah 
presentation of appeals and an unfair distribution of bur- 
dens. Benevolent impulse is discouraged when open- 
hearted men discover that the program of Kingdom pro- 
motion is listless, emotional, and haphazard. When gifts 
are administered on a practical, economical, equitable, and 
adequate plan, there is no assignable limit ‘to the measure 
of benevolent purpose. 

Stewardship’s solution.—It is the province of Christian 
stewardship to assist the individual disciple in interpret- 
ing his responsibility in the matter of material possessions 
and to suggest adequate methods for Kingdom promotion. 
The method very widely recommended to-day is that of 
regular, systematic, and proportionate giving on the part 
of all disciples, the proportion being based upon the in- 
come received. In a large majority of cases the propor- 
tion of income agreed upon is the historic proportion of the 


115 


116 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


tenth. As the people of ancient Israel regularly brought 
the tithe of their increase for the services of the Temple, 
so the modern Christian is encouraged to bring the tenth 
of his income for the propagation of the gospel. Let us 
examine the merits of this method with respect to its 
suitability to modern religious conditions. 


PRACTICABILITY 

Simple.—The principle of proportionate giving is sim- 
ple. The least educated man in the community can use 
it. The little boy or girl in the primary grades can com- 
prehend it. As soon as fingers or pennies can be counted, 
the child can count out his tenth and offer it, and as he 
goes on into years of understanding, he can still practice 
it; for, however complicated his later affairs may become, 
they can never reach beyond the simple convenience of 
this, plan. tise 

Adaptable.—It offers distinct advantages in the training 
of Christian character. What begins as an interesting 
juvenile responsibility increases in importance, in moral 
content, in testing power, and in spiritual stabilizing as 
the years increase. It is not a method that must wait for 
intellectual or moral ripening; it can be initiated in the 
very earliest stages of development. It is a habit that 
needs no modification, does not have to be unlearned, in- 
vites no contempt from increasing intelligence, and is ade- 
quate to the end of life. Said a highly educated, refined, 
progressive bishop to the writer recently: “I began to tithe 
when a little boy with the very first money I ever earned, 
and I have never ceased the practice.” 

Protective.—The practical nature of this method is 
seen, too, in the fact that it protects one from unreason- 
able demands, beyond the proportion recognized as his 
accepted duty, and in case of reverses justifies a reduction 
in giving without embarrassment or explanation, while, 
in case of unusual prosperity, there is. no violent disar- 
rangement of his regular principles of generosity. There 
is likewise the same sense of security on the part of the 
church. 

Permanent,—The results of spasmodic giving are in- 


ECONOMIC ASPECTS 117 


creasingly inadequate. No stable plans can be built upon 
such giving, as no accurate forecast can be made of the 
results. Campaigns to arouse impulses of generosity con- 
sume a large’ proportion of the receipts, and the emo- 
tions stirred often cause irreparable inroads upon regular 
contributions. Constant ingenuity is requisite to arouse 
such benevolence, and the power of the appeal grows 
weaker from year to year. The only practical method of 
church finance is the method of universal proportionate 
giving. | 
DEPENDABILITY 

A prejudiced judge——‘I believe that everybody ought 
to decide for himself what he can afford to give, and then 
give it,” is a common statement. Individual judgment on 
what one ought or can afford to give is absolutely unre- 
liable: One’s knowledge of the need or of the basis for 
duty may be pitifully inadequate. Few men are able to 
keep in touch with all the great movements or the pressing 
needs of the Kingdom, and fewer still are able to deter- 
mine their relative duty to each. Even were knowledge 
complete, the judgment might still be biased. -. 3 

An unsafe guide.—Conscience is still less reliable. For 
conscience is so uniformly untrained, warped, vacillating, 
or inconstant that in matters of one’s personal interest it 
ig an insecure foundation. We have only to observe the 
conscientious vagaries of our neighbors to afford ample 
illustration. Conscience is a most reliable voice to tell me 
that I ought to give, and give largely; but for telling me 
how much to give, it is worthless. Only the will of God 
for me, if I can discover that, is adequate to tell me how 
much I ought to give. Christian stewardship endeavors 
to help me discover that will. 

A reliable standard.—Proportionate beneficence pro- 
vides a reliable standard. He who systematically offers 
his tenth knows what he is to give and can make his plans 
accordingly. The amount is determined for him, and his 
responsibility is bounded by the question as to how he 
may most wisely distribute that amount. The church too, 
with its varied functions, is secure of its income. What- 


118 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


ever may happen in isolated localities, the church can 
count upon its regular resources. For, taken from year 
to year, the average income varies but little. Vast re- 
gions may be afflicted with financial depression, drought, 
and bankruptcy, but, the world around, there is spring- 
time and harvest, and an average supply of material 
-wealth. When all God’s children are bringing their ap- 
propriate offerings to his altars, there is abundance for 
every need. 


EQurry 


Fairness.—Tithing stewardship is the fairest method 
known to men. It bears equally on all disciples. A per- 
fect adjustment of the burdens of life, it is true, has never 
been discovered; but, taking into account the natural in- 
equalities of life, this method provides the most satisfac- 
tory solution. 

Taking advantage.—Men have various methods of ap- 
portioning responsibility and paying for privilege. The 
most obvious and primitive is the flat-rate method. So 
much money for so much privilege, pleasure, tuition, or 
service. All share and share alike. The railroad, steam- 
boat, opera, grocery, restaurant, are no respecters of per- 


sons; rich and poor have equal treatment. Yet so un- 


evenly does this bear upon men of different conditions 
that constant effort is made to provide exceptions in the 
interest of the less favored. Obviously this flat-rate 
method would find slight approval in the church. 
Pauperization.—T'he more usual method is that of in- 
dividual judgment. This is so inadequate that various 
supplementary devices must be resorted to—donations, 
bazaars, suppers, contributions from nonmembers. ‘This 
general resort to competitive, commercial, emotional, spas- 
-modic, and haphazard giving has proved so inefficient that 
no one longer resorts to it without apology. 
Unworkable—The only other possible direction in 
which the church might move would be a resort to the plan 
of a graduated income tax. By this means the poor widow, 
the bankrupt, the minor, the student, the workingman, 
the wife without an allowance, and other people of sub- 


ECONOMIC ASPECTS 119 


normal income could conceivably be relieved of financial 
responsibility to the Kingdom, more fortunate disciples as- 
suming larger burdens. This would at once rob the church 
of a large element of its democracy, establish a mild form 
of class distinction, diminish the interest of those relieved, 
increase the power of wealth, and measurably justify the 
disproportion already existing between rich and poor. The 
almost unworkable perplexities of this method, however, 
and its constant need of readjustment, as demonstrated in 
national finance, give poor encouragement to the Chris- 
tian brotherhood to launch upon its troubled waters, All 
things considered, the burdens of the church are so dis- 
tributed by the plan of tithing stewardship that no other 
method has been found to approach it in fairness, 
fraternity, or acceptability. 


ADEQUACY 


Measureless riches——The church is seriously handi- 
capped in its endeavors at Kingdom promotion, yet the 
financial resources of its members are entirely ample for 
every legitimate need. The problem is to make these re- 
sources available. The United States is the richest coun- 
try in the world. It possesses a quarter of the world’s 
wealth. Its total wealth exceeds $300,000,000,000. The 
per capita. wealth is ten times that of 1850, and the ag- 
gregate wealth forty times as large. The national income 
for 1920 was estimated at more than $65,000,000,000. 
Had every man, woman, and child contributed one tenth 
of his income to benevolent causes, the grand total would 
have been more than $6,500,000,000. The statistics of the 
United Stewardship Council for 1922 show that all the 
Protestant denominations of the United States gave that 
year to all religious causes, both local and benevolent, a 
total of less than $450,000,000. If we estimate that all 
other religious bodies added to this amount $200,000,000, 
which is exceedingly doubtful, we have a total of $650,- 
000,000, or approximately one tenth of one tenth of the 
income of the country. 

Unbounded luxury.—Our national luxury bill is some- 
what higher. While we pay less than $650,000,000 a year 


120 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


for religion we are paying between $12,000,000,000 and 
$15,000,000,000 for various luxuries such as soft drinks, 
candy, cosmetics, and tobacco, or from twenty to twenty- 
five times as much as for religion. 

Microscopic generosity.—Let us draw a few more con- 
trasts. From the latest available figures the present 
yearly income of the members of a single Protestant de- 
nomination—the Methodist Episcopal Church—is well 
above $2,422,000,000. The tithe of this income would 
therefore exceed $242,000,000. Yet the gifts for 1922, 
through all the agencies of this church, to all causes totaled 
less than $87,000,000.. Instead of ten per cent to all reli- 
gious causes the members of this church paid a trifle more 
than three and one-half per cent. For all the benevolent 
causes represented by the Centenary, Methodists contrib- 
uted a little more than $14,000,000, or just over one half 
of one per cent of their income. The proportion is ap- - 
proximately the same in other Protestant denominations. 
Meanwhile the men of America were consuming $2,250,- 
000,000 in tobacco, or approximately 175 Oentenaries 
every year. | 


READJUSTMENT 


Financial reform.—The average man who accepts this 
principle of stewardship will have to change his methods 
of personal finance. Society is so organized that in most 
cases the entire income is consumed as fast as earned. 
Possibly this is an economic law that, on the average, must 
always prevail. Indeed, the very function of income is to 
provide for outgo. Money is valueless where it cannot be 
used. So he who begins to make larger contributions to 
the Kingdom must curtail his expenditures elsewhere. 

Budget revision.—It means that the Christian steward 
must revise his budget. He must study the problem of 
providing for the church by his new standard and, at the 
same time, provide as a Christian should do for the dis- 
charge of his other normal obligations. It may require 
very careful planning, possibly rigid economy, or even 
sacrifice. 

Business introspection.—But the study and the plan- 


ECONOMIC ASPECTS 121 


ning will be most salutary, both in their provision for 
added beneficence, and because they will stimulate a 
thoughtful review of the Christian steward’s total attitude 
toward his temporal affairs. He will be led to consider 
afresh the sources of his income, the quality of his toil or 
service, the maxims of his business, the wisest employ- 
ment of his time, the legitimacy of his investments, the 
nature and cost of his diversions, his standards of accu- 
mulation, his social obligations, and his attitude toward 
and provision for the normal needs of his family. In 
short, his Christian stewardship will tend to keep his pro- 
gram of living sensitively adjusted to the purposes of God 
for his life. 


“MATERIAL REWARDS” 


Is prosperity guaranteed?—Those who advocate these 
principles are frequently accused of “promising prosper- 
ity” to those who tithe and of encouraging stewards to look 
for “material rewards.” It should be unnecessary to say 
that this is never done by those who apprehend the real 
significance of Christian stewardship. He who offers his 
_ tithe to God for the purpose of reaping a larger harvest 
is not loyally offering the “first-fruits”; he is offering a 
bribe, and no Christian teacher should encourage him to 
give with expectation of any such reward. 

Interesting testimony.—Yet the literature of the 
churches is full of sincere and unimpeachable testimony to 
the effect that many who have accepted tithing steward- 
ship have been prospered as never before. Here is a pastor 
who testifies: “A farmer in my church recently began to 
tithe, and his fields have yielded far more abundantly 
than those of his neighbors immediately surrounding.” 
The superintendent of a great factory says: “I began 
tithing a dozen years ago, and almost every year since, 
my salary has been increased, while recently, again, it has 
been nearly doubled.” A prominent manufacturer de- 
clares: “My business never before flourished as it has done 
since I began to be a tithing steward.” 

Assurance.—Here is the trustee of a great city church, 
a contractor of large operations, who testifies in the church 


122 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


service: “I have practiced tithing for years. It has paid 
me in every way. If any of these young people will iry 
this plan for a year and come out the poorer for it, I will 
guarantee to make up to them any difference in income.” 
And a humble school-teacher cheerfully bears witness that 
her salary has been advanced nearly every year since she 
adopted this principle. 

The answer ?—What shall we say to these things? The 
principle is unquestioned that no man can rightly or 
safely enter upon the duties of tithing stewardship with 
the purpose of receiving material reward; yet there are 
tens of thousands of the most devout, intelligent, reliable, 
and successful members of our churches who gladly testify 
to an increased prosperity following the acceptance of 
stewardship responsibilities. How can these divergencies 
be reconciled? Let us look a little further. 


CAUSE AND EFFECT 


A natural result—No miracle need be assumed nor any 
divine partiality invoked to account for an increased pros- 
perity on the part of the faithful Christian steward. Na- 
ture herself has provided in due course for this very 
situation. : 

Reconstructed ideals——When a man genuinely and de- 
liberately embraces Christian stewardship he takes a new 
attitude toward life. Not only his spiritual activities but 
his daily business, social, and material responsibilities pass 
under rigid and conscientious review, and he enters upon 
a new relation to his task of making a living. He is now 
a partner with God, he must work in a way acceptable to 
God, the rewards of his toil are now divisible with God. 
His whole temporal program is on a loftier and more 
dignified plan. 

A new spirit.—System becomes natural and inevitable. 
Thrift takes on new meaning. Economy becomes some- 
thing more than the dread obligation to “make ends meet” 
and assumes the diginity of a real working program. He 
goes light-heartedly to his daily task with a prayer to 
God to bless his toil, because such toil now seems worth 
praying for—it is a part of God’s business. He plans 


ECONOMIC ASPECTS 123 


his household expenditures more wisely. He adjusts his 
plan of living to a more rational and Christian scale. Out 
of this system, thrift, and economy grows a normal fruit- 
age—prosperity—a widened margin of income over outgo. 


PROVIDENCE 


No conflict—‘“Are we then forbidden to say that God 
promises to prosper those who obey him?” We are not. 
All the spirit of his Book is to the purpose that he cares 
for his own, that though even the king of beasts may roar 
in vain for his food “they that seek the Lord shall not 
want any good thing,” that if we seek first the Kingdom, 
all shall be added unto us. 

“This God is our God.”—Beyond all the sowings and 
reapings of nature, all the provisions of cause and effect, 
there is still our Father who is in heaven, a just Judge, 
a benevolent Creator, a Parent with a heart of infinite 
love. And though we have no right to make to our fellow 
man promises we can have no hand in fulfilling, we can 
point him to the testimony of history and experience that, 
in the long run, “the willing and obedient shall eat the 
_ good of the land.” | 


For Stupy anp Discussion 


1. Name some advantages and disadvantages of emo- 
tional appeals to beneficence. 

2. Would you encourage young children to tithe? a 
poor man? a man in debt? why? 

3. Discuss briefly the function of conscience in deter- 
mining matters of duty. 

4. Try to estimate the total income of the entire mem- 
bership of your church. How much more would the tithe 
of this produce than the present annual giving? 

5. If there were money enough, what new enterprises 
would you inaugurate in your church? 

6. If all Christians tithed, would enough be produced 
for all the needs of the church? 

%. Should we constrain wealthy Christians to give to 
the church more than their tithe? Why or why not? 


For Reference and Study 


1 Cor.:8: 9. 
But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become 
a stumblingblock to the weak. 


Mal. 3. 14-18. 

Ye have said, It is vain to serve God; and what profit is 
it that we have kept his charge, and that we have walked 
mournfully before Jehovah of hosts? and now we call the 
proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are built up; 
yea, they tempt God and escape. Then they that feared 
Jehovah spake one with another; and Jehovah hearkened, and 
heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for 
them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon his name. 
And they shall be mine, saith Jehovah of hosts, even mine own 
possession, in the day that I make; and J will spare them, as 
aman spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye 
return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, be- 
tween him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. 


Mark 10. 28-31. 

Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have 
followed thee. Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, There is no 
man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, 
or father, or children, or lands, for my sake, and for the 
gospel’s sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this 
time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and: mothers, and 
children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to 
come eternal life. But many that are first shall be last; and 
the last first. 


Rom. 8. 31-39. 
What then shall we say to these things? If God ts for us, 
who is against us? He that spareth not his own Son, but 
delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him 
freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the 
charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that 
condemneth? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that 
was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, 
who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us 
from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or perse- 
cution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Even as 
it is written, 
For thy sake we are killed all the day long; 
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors 
through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things pres- 
ent, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the 
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
(Read also Mark 10. 17-27 and 1 Tim. 6. 6-21.) 


CHAPTER XII 
ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL 


THe INNER LIFE 


Character the goal.—The end of Christian stewardship 
is human character. The material requirements of God’s 
kingdom provide no adequate explanation of this princi- 
ple. God’s sovereign purposes of redemption could doubt- 
less thave been fulfilled without appeal to the help of man. 
He who owns “the cattle upon a thousand hills,” who pro- 
vides harvests that “shake lke Lebanon,” who hid the 
treasures of gold in the pockets of the mountains and. 
giveth food to “every living thing,” is surely above de- | 
pendence on our contributions. It is for the moral reac- | 
tion upon our inner selves that God requires our sacrifices. | 
Not the gift but the giver is God seeking. 

Human nature—And it is not primarily that the 
church may have a system of finance, but that its moral 
faculties may be developed that the principles of steward- 
ship have been wrought into its fiber. The Jewish tithe 
was not for the sake of the tithe but for the sake of the 
Jew. And if our researches into his history and psy- 
chology convince us that he needed this discipline, a little 
introspection will persuade us that even the twentieth- 
century Christian is not exempt from the need of such re- 
straint. The argument for proportionate beneficence 
finds equal support in antique laws and from present-day 
propensities. 

Moral and social.—Stewardship is a matter of the heart. 
It permeates and issues from the inner life. It rests upon 
an exalted conception of man’s relation to God, seeks a 
right attitude toward his will, and acknowledges his cre- 
ative power and sovereign ownership. All this implies 
kinship and obligation to other human beings and ex- 
presses itself in active good will toward men. Thus, what 


125 


126 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


begins as individual and personal promptly goes on to 
embrace the moral and social. 


THe Loca CuurcH 


New courage.—The practice of tithing stewardship has 
a marked influence upon the Christian community. It 
vitalizes the moral and social ideals of the church in a 
variety of ways. Consider the effect upon a congrega- 
tion of an abundant, regular, and assured supply for all 
its material and social needs and for every appropriate 
form of benevolent endeavor. 

Social emancipation.—First would be the emancipation 
of the social impulse from commercialism. Men and 
women could assemble on festive occasions and eat and 
drink together without taking anxious thought as to the 


profit or loss to a depleted treasury of their pleasant ad- — 


venture. Suppers, parties, excursions, and other forms 


of social activity could still have their legitimate place; 


but the little wheedlings, jockeyings, subterfuges, and 
trickeries of the present financial regime would have no 
further place or welcome, and the parasitic army that 
follows the pastor and the church officer about with some- 


thing to sell or with some device for releasing easy money — 


would be reduced to the necessity of earning an honest liv- 
ing. Socials for genuinely social purposes may yet prove 
to be a greater blessing to the church than has ever yet 
been dreamed, but socials as a substitute for cheerful giv- 
ing and as a method for coaxing reluctant contributions 
from unconsecrated pockets are not only a pathetic failure 
but a moral blight. 

Outside approval.—The influence upon the unchurched 
community of a congregation unanimously committed to 
stewardship methods of finance would be incalculable. 
Nothing so impresses the dignity of an organization upon 


those without as the ability successfully to manage its own ~ 


affairs. The nation, business house, church, family, in- 
dividual, whose chief occupation is the solicitation of help 
from outside always invites pity, often suspicion, and ul- 
timately contempt. The church that pays its own bills, 
promptly and in full, enlarges its plans for the service of 


ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL 127 


men, carries its gospel to the ends of the earth, and does 
all this without complaining, whining, shirking, or strain- 
ing, cannot prevent the widespread approval that will in 
due time be accorded it. 


A ProspLEM IN MAN PowrER 


Economy of energy.—It is interesting to speculate on 
the amount of man power—and woman power—which 
widespread stewardship would release for legitimate 
church and community service. The men who constitute 
the average official board are among the men who are usu- 
ally designated as the “leading members” of the church. 
Yet in what religious activities are they permitted or 
qualified to lead? ‘Their available time for serving the 
ehurch and for counseling together upon its enterprises is 
often consumed in fretfully and laboriously considering 
how to make its inadequate finances suffice for its multi- 
plying needs. 

Deflected leadership.—There are among us men who 
have grown gray-headed in the ministry of the church who 
have, as their chief memory of the official board, a monthly 
midnight agony over hopeless finances. Years upon years 
of wasted time, all of which might have been saved had 
God’s principle of stewardship been the accepted policy 
of his church! Had all the available time of this vast 
multitude of the picked men of the church through all 
these years been turned into channels of productive Chris- 
tian service, only God can estimate the heights of moral 
power and the riches of spiritual life to which the church 
might have at this hour attained. 

Wasted womanhood.—Could a visitor from Mars be 
made acquainted with the needs, sins, and sorrows of 
our world, and of the mission of Jesus and his church, and 
then told that every local congregation is equipped with a 
Ladies’ Aid Society, what would be his supposition as to 
the function of this band of noble women? Would he 
ever guess that their corporate intelligence and limited 
physical strength are largely given to devising laborious” 
plans for enticing scattering nickels from grudging saints 
and grimacing sinners? He would picture them praying 


128 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


by the bedside of the sick, carrying cheer to the dis- 
couraged, wading through the cold slush of winter on er- 
rands of mercy, aiding the pastor in great schemes and 
adventures of spiritual conquest. Alas! that our covetous 
hearts and our fear to trust God’s ways have so prostituted 
their generous endeavor! And think what the future must 
bring forth when their talents are ultimately released ! 


Tuer Heart Fottows THE TREASURE 


Multiplying influence.—On the principle here discussed 
the. average’ person connected with the church would be 
giving three times as much to its enterprises as he now 
contributes. This would increase its:dignity as a going 
concern and as a moral force in the community and would 
augment the interest in its welfare on the part of every 
person who supported it. 

Investment begets interest.—It is a recognized fact that 
a man’s interest in any enterprise varies in proportion to — 
his investment. Said a keen young professional man at 
the time of the World War: “I never used to pay any 
attention to-the financial pages of the newspapers. The 
bond and stock columns were of no interest to me. But 
now I have a few Liberty Bonds and I am constantly 
' watching the market.” ‘The ups and downs of the church 
are of all too little interest to the average member. He 
has so little invested. But let him begin to pour at least 
one tenth of his. resources into its enterprises, and his in- 
terest will become intense. 

Above dependeney.—The church’s spirit of self-respect, 
too, .will grow correspondingly. Nothing so imparts a 
sense of power to win as the ability to live above the pov- 
erty line. A reasonable monthly allowance has made of 
more than one spendthrift. schoolboy or college girl or 
housewife a careful, thrifty financier. When the church 
lives from hand to mouth, it is impossible to hold up its 
head with confidence; but once let it become conscious of 
its mission, and that it is now able to fulfill and is actu- 
ally and amply fulfilling that mission, its assurance and 
dignity will become triumphant. 


ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL 129 


Gop CLEANSES THE “ComMON” 


Drudgery exalted.—Christian stewardship swiftly con- 
nects a man’s religion with his everyday life. It gives 
dignity to his struggle for existence. He is no mere atom 
whirled about in the vortex of destiny; he is a consequen- 
tial human soul, big enough at least for God to take into 
partnership. God is helping him, and he is helping God. 
The very coin that rewards his dusty toil is redeemed from 
the class of “filthy lucre,” for he is earning it diligently, 
honestly, reverently, and is using it for sacred purposes 
—mostly for himself and his loved ones, but with a 
worthy and willing share for God’s needy children and 
Kingdom. | 

Money sanctified—This spirit of stewardship carried 
into all material affairs would inevitably sanctify the en- 
‘tire process of money getting, investment, expenditure, 
and giving; and covetousness, injustice, bargain driving, 
extravagance, and stinginess would speedily be submerged 
in loftier purposes. 

Business humanized.-—When principles of Christian 
stewardship are universally applied in the world of busi- 
ness, finance and industry will be ruled by maxims hith- 
erto but little known. Both labor and capital will feel the 
wholesome restraint of the Christ ideal, speculation and 
investment will observe the simple formula of the Golden 
Rule, class rivalries will be dissolved in the atmosphere of 
brotherhood, and money will be held in reverent esteem 
as the efficient servant of a larger humanity. 

Society Christianized—The harassing problems of race 
and clan cannot continue to resist this comprehensive prin- 
ciple. Just how the strained relations of Negro and white 
man, of Japanese and Californian, of European and Chi- 
nese, of German, Russian, French, Italian, Irish, and all 
the other struggling tribes of men, are to be solved and 
harmonized, no prophet of to-day would dare predict. But 
when every man and every nation come to realize a full 
sense of stewardship for every other man and nation, the 
end of war, oppression, soul slavery, and privileged aristoc- 
racy will be at hand. Stewardship will be the dominant 


130 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


note in national and international councils, and the new 
world vision will be the vision of a spiritual democracy. 


A REVERSIBLE Motor 


Material or spiritual?—Stewardship is commonly re- 
garded as having reference to material possessions and is 
not always considered in the formulation of plans for the 
spiritual life of the church. This is a natural but dan- 
gerous error. As already noted, the prime purpose of 
stewardship is spiritual, and the promotion of steward- 
ship, if wisely carried out, invariably results in an in- 
erease of spiritual life. Of this fact there is abundant 
and increasing evidence. . 

Evangelism or stewardship ?—“Which should come first 
in. the church’s program of instruction—stewardship or 
evangelism?” The correct answer is “Both!” Nothing 
can so prepare the church to. profit by stewardship instruc- 
tion as a season in which goodly numbers of young and 
old are offering themselves to the Christian life. At such — 
times heart and conscience are tender, and both mature 
disciple and recent convert are ready to accept larger re- 
sponsibilities of consecration. Such days bring to pastor 
and Sunday-school worker golden opportunities to press 


home the ideals, duties, joys, and privileges of Christian — 


stewardship and to propose some worth-while task in the 
great partnership of world redemption. 


First THInGs First 


Spiritual lethargy.—On the other hand, the speediest 
way to promote a rational evangelism in the church is 
to set before its people the challenge of Christian stew- 
ardship. Many churches are-so derelict in the discharge 
of their duty to the community, many disciples so negli- 
gent of their obligation to sustain the missionary endea- 
vors of the Kingdom, that they are not fit channels for the 
divine Spirit. Many a father, grown rich in material pos- 
sessions, apathetic toward spiritual demands, diligent in 
business, lavish toward luxury and pleasure, wonders why 
his sons stray in folly and sin, with no care for the church 
to which he, in principle, still affectionately adheres. 


ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL 131 


No figs from thistles—The explanation is simple. The 
sons are fully aware that no father whose entire existence 
‘is bound up in everything but his church, who never makes 
any self-denying contribution to its program, and who 
never, except under a reluctant compulsion, offers more 
than a trifling pittance to his Lord has any real place in 
his heart for the church or puts any real value upon its 
teachings. The worldly, frivolous, or stingy mother will 
look in vain for seriousness in her daughters. Though 
‘not as circumspect as she, they are valuing her church at 
her own estimate. | 

A square deal for God.—Fathers who have robbed God 
for half a lifetime will never see their sons in the King- 
dom until they have squared themselves with God. Mothers: 
will pray in vain for their daughters until they evince as 
much interest in the Kingdom as they manifest enthusiasm 
for the latest novelty. Churches will wait in vain to see 
converts gathering at their altars until they learn to look 
away from the narrow program of their own conservation 
to God’s infinitely larger program for the conservation of 
the race. He who leads an individual or a church to the 
joys and the burdens of stewardship is opening a wide 
channel for the influx of spiritual life. 

Surprised by revival—-Some months ago the members 
of a Mid-Western church responded to their pastor’s chal- 
lenge to an enlarged interest in Christian stewardship and’ 
to a program of generous missionary giving. So thor-- 

ough was their interest in God’s great plans of redemp-. 
tion, and so large were their offerings that all hearts were: 
tender toward the needs of sinful men. In the midst of a: 
Sunday-morning service the pastor was moved to invite 
any who might wish to offer themselves as Christian dis~ 
ciples. In response not fewer than thirty-six adult pen 
tents came forward to seek the privileges of the new life. 

Unexpected converts.—A Conference district in an East- 
ern State inaugurated a simultaneous campaign of stew- 
ardship instruction. No decisions for stewardship, for 
life service, or for entrance upon the Christian life were 
asked for until the campaign was finished; but so great 
was the interest, and so deep the spirit of consecration that 


132 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


when the campaign was half over, many pastors declared 
that more persons had voluntarily expressed a purpose to 
lead the Christian life than had usually offered themselves 
in the course of a year’s activities. 


ALWAYS A REASON 


The might of trust.—The influence of stewardship on 
the spiritual life is as simple as nature. Stewardship ac- 
knowledges God and puts him first in all life’s program. 
This brings stability. Stewardship compels a life of 
trust. He who takes from the scanty income which feeds 
his family a substantial proportion to promote God’s king- 
dom knows that unless God’s providence watches over him 
and his, he has made a madman’s bargain. But he knows 
that, since God made all and gives all, God is able and 
ready to provide everything needful. And he learns to 
trust him instead of his own skill or his bank or his job. 
Thus begins a life of peace which none but those who rec- 
ognize themselves as stewards of God can fully know. 


TRUST IN GOD! 


Call it not faith to trust in God 
When ample is your store, 

And when to barns already filled 
The Lord is adding more. 


‘Call it not faith to give your tenth, 
While yet nine tenths remain: 
And while your offering to the Lord 

Is felt not from your gain. 


Tis when the fig tree blossoms not, 
Nor fruit is in the vine, 

The labor of the olive fails, 
Nor corn is there, nor wine. 


’'Tis when the flock fails from the field, 
Nor herd is in the stall; 

To trust in God then—that is faith, 
The strongest faith of all. 


i By the late Senator John Macdonald, of Canada. 


ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL 133 


Makine Prayer CONCRETE 


Worth-while praying.—Stewardship enlarges the prayer 
horizon and provides financial investments for which the 
Christian can afford to pray. The objects of our prayer 
are sometimes little and sometimes hackneyed and routine. 
But think of the man who has for years been giving of his 
tithe for the evangelization of Africa! ‘Try to visualize 
the multitudinous objects of his investment and of his 
eager devotion as he kneels for daily prayer—all the mis- 
sionaries upon his chosen field and those scattered over 
the vast continent; all the native workers, the teachers, 
the physicians, the nurses, the students in classes, the 
patients in hospitals, the converts in training; all the 
pagan tribes and their dusky leaders, the sorrowing, suf- 
fering, sinning, ignorant, dying, of all those hopeless mil- 
lions; all the mission stations, churches, circuits, districts, 
with their superintendents and the bishop in charge. 
There, surely, is no lack of material and incentive for 
intelligent and prevailing prayer! 

Unassailable—To one committed to principles of 
stewardship the ravages of covetousness, that sin most 


_ paralyzing and deadly in the opulent age in which we live, 


have no terrors; for his life, bound up with higher and 
nobler endeavors, has neither time nor disposition to lis- 
ten to the seductions of those fleeting joys and tawdry 
treasures which perish with the using. 


For Stupy AND Discussion 


1. What in your observation is the effect upon the out- 
side world of mendicant methods of church finance? 

2. Sketch the activities of a Ladies’ Aid Society that 
had no money to raise; an official board. 

3. Discuss the spirit of stewardship in international re- 
lations. 

4. How does a lack of stewardship conviction affect the 
spiritual condition of the church? 

5. If you had one hundred thousand dollars invested 
in missions in China, how would it affect your daily 
prayers? 


For Reference and Study 


John 12. 32. 
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 


unto myself. 


Mark 10. 42-45. 

And Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye 
know that they who are accounted to rule over the Gentiles 
lord it over them; and their great ones exercise authority over 
them. But it is not so among you: but whosoever would be- 
come great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever 
would be first among you, shall be servant of all. For the 


Son of man also came not to be ministered unto, but to | 


minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. 


Rom. 10. 13-15. 

For, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shail 
be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have 
not believed? and how shall they believe in him whom they 
have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? 
and how shall they preach, except they be sent? even as it is 


written, How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad 


tidings of good things! 


Matt. 28. 18-20. 

And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All 
authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. 
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptiz- 
ing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and 
of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things what- 
soever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the world. 


~ 


Oe 


CHAPTER XIII 
WORLD SERVICE 


ACRES OF DIAMONDS 


A rich prospect.—If the end of Christian stewardship 
is the perfection of character, the objective of the church 
is the transformation of the race. “Begin at Jerusalem” 
was Jesus’ program. Here everything was ready—a great 
festival to catch and scatter the pentecostal message; a 
crippled beggar to feel Jesus’ power and tell the neighbor- 
hood; a population trained in the law and the prophets, 
familiar with the gospel story, and having relatives and 
trade connections in every port from Spain to India. It 
was the way of nature—the gospel yeast would reproduce 
itself everywhere. 

Right at our feet.—Our “Jerusalem” is our neighbor- 
hood. At home is the logical place to begin. Without a 
sincere interest in those about us we are hardly ready to 
attempt the difficult task of winning a world. Here are 
many who unless we help them will not be helped. Any 
correct principle of stewardship, then, will accept its 
responsibilities in behalf of the local church. We are 
stewards of our own congregation. 


A BENEVOLENT MoNnoPpoLy 


Personnel.—That the average church is inadequately 
equipped and sustained would be admitted unanimously. 
Until this condition is remedied, it can never fulfill its 
mission to the world. Its obligations are too enormous 
to be met through inefficiency, poverty, and neglect. They 
can be provided for only by levying tribute upon our 
noblest possessions, material, social, and spiritual. First 
and foremost is consecrated personality—a trained minis- 
try, responsive to the world’s needs, sensitive to the di- 
vine program, adequate in number and character for its 
peculiar problems; lay consecration, offering personnel 


135 


136 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


equipment for purposes of administration, leadership, 
and specialized forms of service; an army of officers and 
soldiers so loyal, united, and valiant that their impact 
upon the community will be irresistible. Such a church 
presupposes a high sense of stewardship. | 

Equipment.—Equally important is material equipment. 
Many churches are so handicapped by unsuitable location, 
lack of room, want of apparatus for a well-rounded devo- 
tional, educational, and social program, imperfect provi- 
sion for physical comfort, scant appeal to esthetic taste, 
and general disregard of the demands of modern life that 
their appeal is ineffective. _ Provision must be made to 
supply the legitimate social needs of the community, not 
as bait to entice people into the services of the church, but 
as a part of the church’s total duty to encourage a fully 
rounded program of living. The gymnasium and the 
swimming pool may not result in a larger Sunday school 
or midweek service, though such an outcome is most legi- — 
timate, but if the church owes to its young life the service 
these things offer, the duty is plain, and the fruitage may 
be awaited with patience. 

Evangelistic purpose——Various forms of community 


contact will constitute the church’s stewardship in behalf 


of those who surround it. As a crowning feature the © 
church must be made aware of its evangelistic responsi- 
bility and be provided with a program of activities so 
complete, scientific, and comprehensive that the central 
aim and fruitage of its life will be the winning of men 
to God and their building up into stalwart, symmetrical, 
and efficient character. This will require far more than 
occasional, spasmodic effort. The ceaseless purpose and 
passion of church and minister must unite in systematic 
endeavor for the maturing of character for the Kingdom. 


Goop AMERICANS 


True neighbors.—Christian patriotism must be so clari- 
fied, idealized, and concreted as to rise to the dignity of 
a real stewardship toward every ingredient of our national 


1See Everyday Evangelism, by Bishop Frederick D. Leete. 


WORLD SERVICE 137 


life. The patriotism of Jesus was not of racial domi- 
nance but of helpful ministry and spiritual emancipation 
for fellow countrymen and, through these, for the deni- 
zens of the world. Such patriotism embodies itself in a 
program of stewardship activity in behalf of one’s neigh- 
bor, whatever his station, caste, or color. The Christian 
steward is therefore a supporter of home-missionary en- 
terprise. In this he finds ample stimulus to interested at- 
tention, perplexities for the taxing of his patience and 
skill, demands upon his material resources. For at his 
door are such romantic, baffling, hope-inspiring opportuni- 
ties for Kingdom building as to challenge every energy 
and talent. 

The outposts—From long habit our first thought is of 
the frontier. Here the earlier endeavors of the church 
converged. ‘To make the frontier safe for scattered hu- 
manity and oncoming civilization was the pressing task. 
The frontier has disappeared. Multiplying populations 
and modern transportation and communication have made 
neighbors of the most remote; but the problems of the 
frontier remain. 

Religious destitution.—Bishop Burns reports sixty-five 
preaching appointments in the Helena area, with “not a 
church building.” He tells of one district of twenty-four 
pastors, seventeen of whom are college and seminary grad- 
uates, with only one good church building. In fruitful 
California the superintendent of a central district reports a 
tract of one hundred square miles without a religious or- 
ganization of any sort. In cultured New England a con- 
verted family was compelled to go thirty miles to find a 
church home. In the Southern mountains religious desti- 
tution is still appalling. Such inadequate provision is 
often made for our Negro people that decent houses of 
worship are rare, and the churches are served by non- 
resident pastors, who make their living elsewhere by man- 
ual labor. Of similar urgency are various special 
problems, such as the coke burners of southwestern Penn- 
sylvania, the more isolated mining populations, the great 
logging camps of the Northwest, and the task of planting 
the church in territory dominated by the Mormon faith. 


138 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


ARTESIAN WELLS 


The changing country.—Of yet greater magnitude is 
the obligation to redeem our rural citizenship. In the 
country still dwell those elements of our population most 
accessible to the influences of religion; yet here such 
changes are taking place as demand the wisest counsels, 
the most modern equipment, and the largest possible pro- 
vision for support on the part of the general church. Ad- 
vances in wealth, invention, and discovery, together with 
the wide diffusion of popular knowledge, have altered the 
problems of the rural church almost beyond recognition. 
The building up of great industrial centers, too, and the 
marvelous growth of cities, with the resultant exodus from 
the country of vast numbers of trained and energetic 
young people, have resulted in the depletion of lay lead- 
ership and courage, and accentuated the growing need of 
trained leadership in the pulpit, on the church board, and — 
in the Sunday school, and for such a social, recreational, 
and educational program as will attract, hold, and develop 
the young life of the community for future serviceable- 
ness. 

Moral conservation.— When it is recalled that the moral 
and religious ideals of the country, its preponderance of — 
native Americans, and its Protestant standards of faith, 
together with a freedom from the feverish influences of 
city life, with the solitude conducive to serious thought, 
have in the past provided for both rural and urban 
churches a large part of their substantial membership, the 
conclusion is inescapable that the church must so provide 
for the healthy fruitage of the country parish that this 
supply of available material may continue in both measure 
and quality. Here are problems of personnel, training, 
and equipment to the solution of which the spirit of 
stewardship must unfailingly address itself. 


THe CrowDED WAYS 


Urban problems.—In the city the church meets its most 
stubborn problem. Here mingles the jargon of a thousand 
tongues. Here in infinite variety the prejudices, supersti- 


WORLD SERVICE 139 


tions, sins, virtues, passions, fears, of divers races clash 
in one great agony of aspiration for a larger hfe. This 
confusion of races the church must face, translating these 
incoherent appeals, harmonizing these discords, calming 
these passions, binding up these tattered shreds of faith, 
and setting the feet of these multitudes in the way of 
righteousness. It is no small task. If the sight of an- 
cient recreant Jerusalem broke the Saviour’s heart, well 
may his servants pause before the modern city and 
reverently ask for his wisdom and his patience. 

Startling figures—Of Massachusetts’ population 95 per 
cent are city dwellers, 62 per cent of foreign parentage. 
In Rhode Island 97.5 per cent are of foreign extraction. 
Of Buffalo’s 508,000 population 100,000 are Poles. Chi- 
cago’s 2,700,000 include a foreign element of 2,000,000. 
Detroit’s “native” sons number 20 per cent of her total, 
and Cleveland’s 15 per cent. New York is the largest 
Negro city in the world, with 150,000 Negroes in Harlem 
alone, but with church accommodations for only 20,000. 
What are the other 130,000 doing while the 20,000 wor- 
ship? In the Pittsburgh district live 75,000 Negroes, 
with eight buildings available for worship. What shall the 
harvest be? 

Shepherdless.—Who is caring for these foreign popula-_ 
tions? Jf every child of foreign origin were well nur- 
tured in the faith of his fathers, our responsibility might 
experience a sense of relief. But it is not so. In many 
cases those who come to our shores have broken with the 
faith of their fathers, making no connection here. Many 
of our Italian compatriots, before they left their homes 
in sunny Italy, had grown weary of their ancestral 
church, suspecting its motives, and had formed the def- 
inite purpose to sever all connection with it. Bishop 
Burt recently declared in the writer’s presence that of all 
the Italian men who come to our land barely five per 
cent ever enter a Roman Catholic church. “Having no 
hope and without God in the world,” they reject their 
own communion, distrust all others, neglect the forms of 
worship, and rear their children in atheistic Sunday 
schools. How enormous our stewardship responsibility 


140 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


in behalf of these multitudes who have intrusted their all 
to our keeping! 


A Derap-Rieg Harvest 


The world field——Our brotherhood is world-wide, and 
our stewardship embraces every man for whom the Sa- 
viour died. Still the great commission stands: “Go ye 
into all the world.” This world field is ready. The har- 
vest is overripe. The nations are waiting. World condi- 
tions have precipitated a crisis in non-Christian lands. 
Men of other faiths are recognizing the inadequacy of 
their ancient religions. Idolatry has been weighed and 
found wanting. The world trembles on the brink of reli- 
gious revolution. Hither a new, rational, and living faith 
must be provided, or millions will sink back into indiffer- 
ence, agnosticism, or atheism. If humanity escapes an- 
nihilation by the sword it faces a more appalling bondage 
to materialism. The hope of the world is the gospel. 
Stewardship must bring this gospel to the world. 

China receptive—“China needs the gospel,” declared 
the late Yuan Shih Kai. “I am a Confucianist, and not 
a Christian; but Confucianism is not sufficient in such a 
crisis. We must have the gospel.” And China is ready. 
A century of toil has resulted in 366,500 communicants 
of Protestant churches, and these could be multiplied 
had we the workers and equipment. After twenty cen- 
turies only a thousandth part of China has been won 
to the faith, and the best our church can hope to provide 
in the near future is a missionary force that, for our pro- 
portionate responsibility, equals only the thousandth part 
as many workers as we have in the United States to-day. 


THE Wortp’s Horizon 


India’s anguish.—These conditions are paralleled in 
every mission field. Everywhere political and social ferment, 
with a blind groping for liberty, every country providing 
its own staggering quota of problems and perils. India 
confronts us with her almost impregnable caste system, 
at the bottom of which huddle her fifty-five million un- 


WORLD SERVICE 141 


touchables; with her appalling death rate, fortified by 
superstition and lack of sanitation; with her paralyzing 
poverty, providing a per-capita wealth of only one twenty- 
eighth that of the United States, and an average yearly 
income of twenty dollars. The blight of child labor still 
stunts her physical and intellectual growth. Early mar- 
riage and lack of schools keep down the literacy of 
women to the fearful average of one per cent. 

Ethiopia’s chains.—Northern Africa presents a popu- 
lation of eighty million, almost untouched by the gospel. 
Hight countries under European control, without the 
voice of the evangelical messenger; fifteen hundred miles 
in the Sudan without the footprint of a missionary; igno- 
rance, poverty, disease, and superstition poisoning the life, 
while the fierce faith of Mohammed and the new mate- 
rialism of the West contend with a handful of mission- 
aries for possession of the continent! 

Our Latin neighbors.—In Latin America, with its twen- 
ty-two republics in various stages of development, revolu- 
tion, bigotry, superstition, agnosticism, illiteracy, and the 
lack of democratic ideals, ery out for, yet retard, the work 
of Kingdom building. Intemperance, poverty, and ille- 
gitimacy, the relative absence of sanitation, and the utter 
lack, among the poor, of doctors, nurses, and hospitals, as 
we are accustomed to them, make the fight for healthful 
and holy living almost hopeless. 

War-rent Europe.—Europe’s afterwar paralysis, jeal- 
ousies, revolutions, economic chaos, poverty, and disease 
are an open book. Here, as everywhere, the remedy is the 
gospel. With these discouragements appear such symp- 
toms of returning moral health as present a wholesome 
stimulus to faith and bid us pledge anew our stewardship 
to the work of world redemption. 


UNEQUIPPED 


Wanted—men.—With this harvest stretching in all di- 
rections we are pitifully lacking in harvesters. The golden 
grain is wasting before our eyes. Uncertain of support, 
the church has not dared to provide a program adequate 


142 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


to world requirements. The lack in personnel is discon- 
certing. With high schools and colleges teeming with ad- 
venturous young life, eager to invest its talent in ideal 
forms of human endeavor, the church has not ventured to 
impress this young life into her program or to equip it 
for the high tasks offered by a world’s need. 

Machinery antiquated.—In physical equipment the de- 
ficiencies of the church are indescribable. Few buildings 
have been erected with any clear purpose to serve the needs 
of humankind. 'They are often mere meeting places, un- 
inviting and inconvenient. Even when large and costly 
their condition and arrangement have slight reference to 
the end to be accomplished. More forethought and more 
money would quadruple their usefulness. As to appro- 
priations for carrying on the work the case is even worse. 
In the foreign field the appalling lack of money has re- 
sulted in almost hopeless inadequacy of equipment, which 
often well-nigh disheartens the underpaid and overbur-— 
dened missionary. 

One hope only.—The one remedy for these conditions 
is the acceptance of the larger ideals of stewardship in the 
realms of personality, prayer, and possessions. A more 
intensely personal interest must be awakened; the sub- 
stantial power of intercessory prayer must be made avyail-. 
able; the youth of the church must be cultivated, trained, 
and equipped for service; children, home, and self must 
be deliberately dedicated to the work of God; the mature 
membership of the church brigaded in rational programs 
of more effective endeavor; and the voluntary consecration 
of money, on a church-wide, democratic, and revolutionary 
scale, made a permanent feature of Christian living. 


Our Day or VISITATION 


A new era.—That we are witnessing the dawn of a new 
era is beyond question. There is little time to stand and 
wonder or reflect, for we are rushing into the future with 
meteor speed, and the aspect is swiftly changing. Oppor- 
tunities never known before are to-day within our grasp. 
Of to-morrow none may prophesy. Society is molten and 


WORLD SERVICE 143 


poised over the molds of the future. The kingdoms of 
this world are in flux and ready to become the kingdom 
of our Lord and his anointed. The material resources of 
the age, the unexampled riches of the Western world, offer 
ample provision for human redemption if the church can 
once be brought to recognize her stewardship of life, lead- 
ership, and money, and made willing to pour these treas- 
ures into the channels of the Kingdom. 

The zero hour.—At this hour the crime of crimes is in- 
activity. To hesitate may lose the church its opportunity. 
Delay may postpone for centuries the triumph of Christ. 
Africa, with its wealth of Christian faith, was lost to the 
church in the Middle Ages. Japan might have been taken 
bodily for Christ a generation ago had the appeal of her 
missionaries to come in force been heeded. Our victories 
in the Philippines were sadly reduced because of delayed 
resources. For twenty years Korea, China, India, have in- 
vited—nay, implored—a, quadrupled program of evan- 
gelization, which, for lack of men and money, we have 
steadily denied them. ‘To-day the case is still more press- 
ing. The way yet opens; but a new psychology is abroad 
in non-Christian lands, another spirit pervades the world, 
the welcome to Christ is in doubt, China is in questioning 
mood, India trembles in the balance, trade and commerce 
have supplanted religion as the object of chief attention, 
and who can say when the door may close again in the face 
of the church? God forbid that our modern Zion share 
the fate of ancient Jerusalem, which, though Christ him- 
self walked her streets, perished because she knew not the 
day of her visitation. 


For Strupy AND Discussion 


1. What, in your judgment, are the great unmet needs 
of the church to-day? 

2. List the needs of a modern city church in building 
and equipment. 

3. Discuss the reciprocal relations of home- and for- 
eign-missionary work. 

4. In what respect is the American city the key to 
national religious welfare? 


144 STEWARDSHIP FOR ALL OF LIFE 


5. If you had one million dollars for benevolence, how 
would you invest it? 

6. What bearing has stewardship on world evangeliza- 
tion ? 

%. How can stewardship best be promoted in the 
church? What can you do? 


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